Calvano had a TOP SECRET notebook, like a kid
in a comic book. It was one of those composition
notebooks with a marbleized cardboard cover. He had slapped a
couple of pieces of white surgical tape across the front and
printed "TOP SECRET" "KEEP OUT-- THIS MEANS
YOU!!" and other such nonsense on them in indelible black
Magic Marker. Most kids who keep Top Secret notebooks are content
to stop at that point, but Calvano actually wrote in his.
Sometimes he would park himself on the steps of his house for a
couple of hours and write down all the suspicious activity that
occurred-- "10:13 AM-- car with NY plates drives down
Lincoln Ave. Driver wearing HAT. 10:17 AM-- kid I NEVER SAW
BEFORE walks across intersection of Prospect and Lincoln bouncing
a basketball... or perhaps just PRETENDING TO." I know what
he wrote because, like all kids who keep Top Secret notebooks, he
would read it aloud to his friends at the slightest provocation,
although he first went through the ritual of trying to swear us
to secrecy. Early on we discovered that if we refused to take the
secrecy oath he would read it to us anyway, although he would
fidget uncomfortably and insist, "I could get inna lotta
trouble for this," so we usually took the oath. Its
amazing that he didnt end up writing letters to the editor
explaining that he wears a colander on his head because the CIA
is trying to control his brain with rays from their secret
satellites. Well, I shouldnt say that. For all I know he
did. Maybe hes watching one of those 2002 in
Review shows even as we speak and crying out,
"Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton BROKE UP?? Who could
have ever imagined it happening! They seemed so much in love!
Eee-yow, DEADLY THOUGHT RAYS are attacking my brain!! What did I
do with my COLANDER??"

The Top Secret notebook contained not only
Calvanos observations on the passing scene but sports
scores, titles of monster movies he wanted to see, ideas for
inventions ("2/19/66: a swivel-type chair that when you spin
around it shoots oil out of this spout and your enemies slip and
fall down, allowing you to make your escape. NOTE: perhaps an
EXTRA CAN of oil could be stored on your BELT"), news
stories that caught his fancy (generally Bigfoot sightings and
cattle mutilations. He cut out stories about bus plunges (as in
"Bus Plunge Off Idaho Cliff Kills 27") and pasted them
in a separate scrapbook known as the "Bus Plunge
Book."), and raw facts gleaned from various sources
("7/21/65: FACTS: (1) GUS GRISSOMS real name is VIRGIL
I. GRISSOM (2) Butterfly taste buds are in their FEET (2) GREEN
Milkbone Dog biscuits taste the best, ORANGE the worst. NOTE:
Find out what the "I" in Virgil I. Grissom stands
for"). But the random events occurring in front of his house
took up the bulk of the book, and were his primary interest. He
was looking for patterns and connections among these [seemingly!]
random events. One year, shortly after Christmas, he began
recording exactly when the various families on his block threw
out the Christmas tree. The Moss family couldnt wait to
dump theirs-- on the morning of December 27th, it was
out on the curb. By the first week of January most of the trees
had been discarded. The Passerettis hung onto their tree so
long that Calvano began to suspect he had missed the de-treeing,
but on January 22nd, it finally appeared.

Calvano being Calvano, he tried to frame a
theory about the long tenure of the Passeretti Christmas tree. He
employed a sort of reverse Occams Razor: the simplest or
most obvious explanations-- in this case, inertia or an excess of
holiday spirit-- were summarily rejected. Clearly, there were
darker forces at work... perhaps some dark conspiracy involving
cattle mutilations, or Bigfoot...

Calvano could not quite get his theory to gel.
But, as so often happens when we spent all our waking hours
trying to figure out the connections between the
Passerettis Christmas tree and Yeti sightings, Calvano
awoke with the answer.

Well, not the answer, but at least a
semi-related idea. "All these people are throwing out their
Christmas trees after Christmas, right? Well, what if next year
WE got to the trees before the garbage truck got there, and we
stashed them away till NEXT YEAR?? Then when the NEXT Christmas
comes, we could get the trees and SELL THEM BACK TO THE SAME
PEOPLE."

"If they wanted the same tree, theyd
keep them in the first place," I said.

"Plus," said Picarillo,
"arent the trees dead?"

"Yeah, but they were dead when they bought
them the FIRST time," Calvano pointed out. "You cut
down a tree, its dead. Trees, like icebergs, are mostly
below the surface. Thats why we kept hitting all those
roots when we were trying to dig the secret tunnel in Dr.
Fergussens back yard."

"Boy, is HE a jerk," said Picarillo.
"We had to pologize, AND they STILL MADE us fill in
the hole! It shoulda been one or the other."

"Nobodys arguing with you,
Picarillo," said Calvano. "He pays through the NOSE for
his used tree. Anyway, the point is, a dead tree is a dead tree.
Its not going to be any deader next year. People just buy a
new one every year for the same reason you have to make your bed
every morning even though youre going to sleep in it again
that very night: because EVERYBODY DOES IT."

"We can store the trees in the woods.
During the winter the cold air will keep them even better
preserved then normal, while in the wet months, rain will
rejuvenate the parts requiring water."

"What about when its hot and
sunny?" asked Picarillo.

"Those months will serve to DRY OUT the
trees, so they dont get too wet." Calvano
ostentatiously opened his Top Secret Notebook and made the
notation, "NOTE: December 26th, 1967: We begin
OPERATION--" He paused. "We need a name for
project."

"Operation Christmas Tree!" cried
Picarillo.

"Dont be an idiot," said
Calvano. "If the TOP SECRET NOTEBOOK falls into the wrong
hands, Operation Christmas Tree would give away the
whole plan. It should be something THEY cant figure
out."

Eventually we decided upon "Operation Rat
Patrol," in honor of our favorite TV show, which had just
been canceled. Calvano shut the notebook and we promptly forgot
about Operation Rat Patrol. People bought new trees the following
Christmas season, and continued making their beds every single
day. Angolina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton were born, got
tattoed, fell in love, got married and re-tattooed, got unmarried
but stayed tattooed. Isnt that how it always is? And the
top Secret notebook is probably still out there somewhere. We can
only hope it hasnt fallen into the wrong hands.

The Greatest
Christmas Song of All Time

From time to time I have had the pleasure of
assembling a group of wide-ranging raconteurs to discuss and
debate various topics for the edification of my readers. These
symposiums take place at diners along the less traveled roads of
New Jersey. The word symposium comes from the Greek
[as do 90% of all good diners],"Simps," plus
"Poseurs," plus "ums," (as in "I, um,
believe that, um, Shemp is the, um, most underrated of the, um,
Three Stooges..."). I have not conducted one of these for
quite a while, and technically did not conduct the one with which
I am about to edify you; I was asked to participate in one
sponsored by someone else. Although sponsored might
make you think that the someone else was paying for my pie, which
I am sorry to report is not the case.

Our stellar panel, as they used to say on the
Joe Franklin Show, was to address the issue of The Greatest Car
Ever Made in America. Not to keep you in suspense any longer than
necessary, the answer is: the 1955 Chevy Belair. The other
stellar panel members did not agree with this, but after 20
minutes or so the gentleman who gathered us together felt he had
enough material to write HIS column anyway and shut off the tape
recorder. Here followed 40 minutes or so of non-symposium stuff
such as eating french fries and drinking coffee and saying hey
when did juke boxes stop taking quarters. Then I suggested a
second symposium so that I could get enough material for MY
column, on a festive holiday topic of some sort. No one else
wanted to do this but I did not take no for an answer. My topic
was "The Greatest Christmas Song Of All Time." My other
panel members were a guy with a hat, a guy without a hat, a guy
with one of those things growing on his cheek with a hair
sticking out of it, another guy with a hat, and the first guy
with a hats girl friend, who did not contribute to the
initial symposium but felt capable of holding her own on the
subject of Christmas music.

The second guy with the hat suggested that the
symposium was going to stink because they had not prepared
anything in advance. The guy without the hat agreed and then said
that his favorite Christmas song was Home for the
Holidays by Perry Como. I noted this down, also noting that
the second guy with the hat was sticking his finger down his
throat and pretending to vomit. The guy with the thing on his
cheek said The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole was,
de facto, THE Christmas Song, although the first guy with the
hat, heretofore silent, said the Chipmunk Christmas Song, the one
that starts "Christmas Christmas Time is here / Time for
[something] and time for cheer," is also called simply The
Christmas Song. That is because you can not copyright a
title, explained the guy with the thing on his cheek. The guy
without the hat said well then he was going to write a song and
call it Stairway to Heaven and probably get a ton of airplay
before anybody figured out it wasnt the REAL Stairway to
Heaven. You, said guy with the thing on his cheek, addressing the
guy without the hat, are a moron. But that is okay since it is
probably good to get the moron perspective on Christmas music.
The girl friend of the first guy with the hat said she liked
Sleigh Ride but didnt know who did it, and sang
a little bit of the tune so we would know what song she was
talking about. Yeah, thats a great song, said the second
guy with the hat, and the FIRST guy with the hat said Dude, you
dont even KNOW that song, youre just hitting on my
girl friend. I cant believe you are hitting on my girl
friend when Im sitting right here. The guy with the thing
on his cheek said, Dude? Did you call him Dude? Hey, pal,
youre wearing a hat because youve got a bald spot.
Once you get a bald spot youre too old to call anybody
Dude.

Hey, PAL, said the first guy with the hat,
Im wearing a hat because its WINTER. He pulled off
his hat to show us there was no bald spot, only there was. You
know what other song I really like? asked the guy without the
hat. Sunday Kind of Love by the Harptones. The
relevance to the holiday season escapes me, said the second guy
with the hat. Well, whats the holiday revelenece of
Stairway to Heaven? said the guy without the hat. In
the first place, said the second guy with the hat,
revelence is not a word, and in the second place, YOU
are the only person who mentioned Stairway to Heaven.
The girlfriend of the first guy with the hat said When I was in
high school, you k now what record I really liked? Cool It
Down by First Edition.

GREAT song, said the second guy with the hat,
but the first guy with the hat did not rise to the bait. At this
point I called for a vote and we all wrote down our Top Three
Christmas Songs of All Time, giving three points to # 1, two to #
2, and 1 to # 3. The results were:

The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole (4
points)

Walk This Way by Aerosmith (3 points)

(tie) Santa Claus is Coming to Town (3 points)

(tie) White Christmas (3 points)

(tie) Blue Christmas (3 points)

(tie) Theme from "Mannix" (3 points)

My favorite Christmas song is the instrumental
Linus and Lucy from "A Charlie Brown
Christmas." Ive had the CD playing in my car for the
past two weeks and everybody who gets into my car says "Is
that A Charlie Brown Christmas?" and I say
"Yes it is," and then they say "Could you turn it
off please?" so my Yes it ises have been getting
less enthusiastic each time and I ended up voting for White
Christmas. Anyway, to recap: Best Christmas song: The
Christmas Song by Nat King Cole. Best car: 55 Chevy
Belair. The Chipmunk Christmas song is not called The
Christmas Song, its called The Chipmunk
Song. I dont know why.

WHITE
PANTS: TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY

Many years ago I wrote a column about white
pants-- or rather, about how we are supposed to wear white pants
only between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Although I framed the
piece as an Expert Guy column and the ostensible
author was quite adamant about insisting that white pants should
not be worn at other times of the year, many of my readers
thought they detected ironic undertones and deduced that I
thought the whole concept was silly. Sometimes the deductions
that many of my readers make about me are incorrect. For
instance, a letter arrived this week-- anonymously, Im
sorry to say-- which suggested that I do not write my columns at
a computer terminal like other columnists, but wedge a crayon--
well, lets say under my arm pit, although he mentioned
another location-- and then slide around on a sheet of paper
until "enough gibberish is produced to fill up a page."
This, it goes without saying, is absurd. I have to fill up TWO
pages, for one thing. But my readers were right about me and
white pants.

And Im delighted to say that, thanks to
that column, now we can walk about at any time of the year in
white pants and no one will so much as snort derisively. It
certainly isnt the most important thing to have happened as
a direct result of one of my columns. Im justifiably
prouder of what happened after I published "Grimshaw to
Soviet Union: Its Not Working So Why Dont You Just
Forget the Whole Thing?" and "How Many Movies Does
Halle Berry Have To Take Her Top Off In Before The Academy
Does the Right Thing?" The changes I wrought
through these columns-- and many others-- have altered all of our
lives for the better.

Yet I must confess I was not entirely
disinterested in the outcome of the White Pants All Year Round Or
Not issue. The fact is, at the time I was writing (1996), I owned
a pair of white pants, and thought they would look pretty spiffy
EVEN IN OCTOBER OR OTHER NON-MEMORIAL DAY-THROUGH-LABOR
DAY-MONTHS. When I was fighting the good fight to restore little
tiny diced up toppings to Pizza Hut Deluxe pies instead of the
big stupid CHUNKS of stuff they switched to several years ago, I
was fighting on behalf of freedom-loving people everywhere. When
I fought for white pants, I was fighting for ME. And I won.

And yet, as with all victories when there is
still about 500 words to go, there was a price to pay. James Bond
movies can no longer employ Soviet spies with moles on their
faces as bad guys; High Society Magazine has to run the same five
pictures of Halle Berry over and over. Theres always a
hidden cost. Mankind conquers polo, but inevitably, wolves devour
more children because they are outside running around.
[EDITORS NOTE: Mr. Grimshaw probably means
"polio," not "polo," but that doesnt
make any sense either, so were just going to leave it
alone]. In the same way, emancipated from the closet for an extra
nine months each year, the white pants spend less time hanging
safely next to the Nehru jacket that will EVENTUALLY come back
into style, and more time being exposed to the green gloppy stuff
that youre only supposed to use a little of mixed with soy
sauce and then dip your sushi roll into, but if you use too much
you have green flames shooting out your nose and setting your
menu on fire. Fortunately, though, many sushi places do not even
HAVE menus, just pictures on the wall.

And so, something or other drips onto the white
pants. Sometimes it comes right off if you apply water quickly.
Sometimes it does not, and there is a dreadful maroon blotch
shaped like that thing on Gorbachovs head, along the inseam
at the top of the inner thigh. Sometimes the blotch comes MOST of
the way out, just leaving a faint yellowish blotch along the
inseam at the top of the inner thigh, and this is even worse. We
wont even go there. But the point is, I spilled something
on my white pants, and it looked like that was the end of them.
White pants do look spiffy, but nothing looks less spiffy than
white pants with a map of the Aleutian Islands slapped across one
leg.

I could have cobbled an entire column out of my
attempts to remove that stain. And it would have certainly been a
better column than this one. But I prevailed. I used bleach
sticks, bleaches, detergents, macaroons, stain removers, and
other cleaning agents. I made progress with each of them, except
possibly the macaroons, which, apparently, are some sort of
cookie. I got to the point where the stain was visible only in
very strong light, and then only if you were looking for it. One
more time through the washing machine with a bleach, I decided.
So it was back to the laundromat.

STAIN REMOVERS TEXT BOOK TIP # 7: Make
sure you check the washing machine very thoroughly before
bleaching your white pants for the last time, because even ONE
black t-shirt will complicate matters.

Id like to say Im sorry about the
black t-shirt, which isnt precisely black any more, and on
which the picture of Eminem is now a little indistinct. Eminem
would have been proud of the owners three-and-a-half minute
rapid-fire expression of dismay at the state of his t-shirt /
educated guess about my IQ. Although I cant help feeling
Eminem would have come up with some better rhymes. But then
hes a pro.

So I have these white pants, and here and there
they have what look like (but are not) random patches of zebra
striping. At the moment, these pants are unwearable. However...

Beginning with next weeks column--
ASK THE WHITE PANTS WITH SOME RANDOM PATCHES OF ZEBRA
STRIPING EXPERT GUY- I intend to do my part to change the
way we look at white pants with random patches of zebra striping.
And you, of course, must do your part, by being the
we in the above sentence and deciding that Im
right on the money when I tell you ("we") that those
random zebra stripes are pretty darn attractive after all. If we
("I") can bring the Soviet Union to its knees, we can
surely do this.

MID TERM
INTERVIEW

One of my far-flung correspondents alerted me
to this interesting holiday tradition from the great Northwest:

"Each year, the University of Idaho and
Washington State University spray their landscaping trees with
coyote urine and skunk scent. This way, if anyone hacks down a
tree to turn into a Christmas tree, their house begins to
reek."

I spent a few hours trying to follow this up. I
wanted to know, first of all, does one university use coyote
urine and the other skunk scent? Or does it depend upon the type
of tree, the way I use one kind of bleach for my whites and one
for my colored garments? Maybe they use an incredibly pungent
mixture of both? I also wondered whether these institutes of
higher learning publicized their arboreal additive (to prevent
their trees from being stolen), or whether they kept it a secret
(to stink up as many houses as possible). I went so far as to
call the University of Idaho and asked to be put through to
whomever was in charge of the coyote urine, but I kept getting
disconnected. So until the University of Idaho gets its act
together and shells out for a decent phone system, the answers
will have to wait. In general when Im faced with situations
like this (HUMOR COLUMNIST TIP ALERT!!), I simply continue typing
and hope something funny occurs to me before I hit the 1000 word
mark. This time it wasnt necessary since my daughter was
visiting for Thanksgiving and offered to be interviewed for the
column. It would be nice to say she saw that I was having some
trouble working up the column, but the fact is that she offers to
be interviewed for the column every week.

ME: What do you want to be interviewed about?

EMMA: College life. You havent
interviewed me at all since I went to college. Your readers
probably want to know--

ME: How did you do on your midterms?

EMMA: Thats a really lame question.
[Turns to her friend C-, who is also visiting for Thanksgiving]
Isnt that really lame?

C-: Yeah.

EMMA: Cuz college isnt about, like, test
scores.

ME: What is college, like, about?

EMMA: Its about life. [Uproarious
laughter]. Theres a guy on our floor-- he had a UNI-BROW.
But I plucked it for him. We told him how nice he looked now, and
how Indian women would like it. Because his mother only
lets him date Indian women.

ME: Is he Indian?

EMMA: Duh!

ME: American Indian, or the other kind?

EMMA: Im not even going to answer that.
Hey, my roommate Sylvia is from Canada. So when I knock on the
door, I knock in the rhythm of "O Canada" so she knows
its me. Like "Knock (pause) Knock knock-knock-knock
(pause) Knock KNOCK knock knock-knock knock-knock."

ME: Why do you knock on your own door?

EMMA: C-, why dont YOU answer that one?

C-: Shes being polite. And otherwise she
wouldnt be able to knock in the rhythm of O
Canada.

ME: I see.

C-: I had a pink streak in my hair. I got
really drunk and I asked one of the people down the hall to put a
pink streak in my hair. They didnt want to do it because
they thought I was too drunk. I also cleaned my room. I grabbed a
swiffer-sweeper and started sweeping.

ME: A swiffer-sweeper?

C-: Uh-huh. I did a really good job.

EMMA: There are two Megans on my floor. One has
blue hair and one is crazy.

ME: The one with blue hair is not crazy?

EMMA: Just a little retro. One Megan spells her
name with an H, the other not.

EMMA: Just STOP. The Olsen twins were visiting
somebody one day too. They couldnt get into the building.
Well, one had ID and could, but they wouldnt let the other
one in. It was pretty funny. She was going, "Hel-LO! LOOK at
us! Were TWINS!!" But they still wouldnt let her
in.

ME: Is there anybody else of note among your
classmates?

EMMA: The guy who does the Hey dude,
its a DELL commercials. Hes a sophomore.

C-: Its kind of sad to think there are
people reading this who are going, Wow, she goes to school
with the DELL guy! Thats SO COOL!

ME: Do either of you take chemistry by any
chance?

C-: I take physics. My physics professor is
Russian and he talks about pirates. He went to the Pirates
of the Caribbean thing at Disney World. I dont know
if he went there because he was already interested in pirates or
that got him interested in the first place.

EMMA: Either way its kind of sad.

C-: Yeah. Well, its kind of sweet if he
grew up in Russia reading about pirates and when he grew up the
Iron curtain fell and he taught physics in America, he finally
got to see one.

EMMA: A bunch of them. Only they were ROBOTS. I
wonder if he KNOWS?

C-: Hes a physics teacher, of COURSE he
knows.

EMMA: Maybe he KNOWS but he wont ADMIT it
to himself. THAT would be pretty pathetic. Hes like writing
to his relatives back in the old country, "I hef seen at
last mini pirates."

ME: Mini pirates?

EMMA: Its MANY in Russian accent. Roosian
accent.

ME: Chemistry would be more helpful to me. I
have a question about coyote urine.

EMMA: This interview is OVER.

ALLTHECOLORSOFAUTUMNLEAVES

We didnt like to color. Not in school,
anyway. In REAL LIFE, coloring was something elseyou had
your own coloring books, which were full of robots and monsters
and your coloring options were more or less unlimited. For one
thing, in coloring BOOKS, the drawings were rendered with thick
black lines that allowed you to slap colors on the page with the
panache of a drunken abstract expressionist. You could press that
crayon as hard as you wished, leaving a streak of green or red
wax half as thick as it was wide. The coloring book paper was
good PULP paper, kissing cousin to the paper our comic books were
printed on.

On the other hand, in school we were given
DITTO sheets to coverdrawings reproduced with faint purple
lines on the same lousy paper we used for our arithmetic work,
pathetic stuff that ripped if you applied too much pressure. If
we were lucky, that is. If we were unlucky, we got typing paper,
more expensive and bright white and virtually crayon repellent.
And it goes without saying that the subject matterseasonal
stuff, without a robot or a death ray in sightwas
execrable. Even Halloween? Oh, ESPECIALLY Halloweenghosts,
witches, and pumpkins. Greatwhite, black, orange.

As we shambled up the ladder of scholarship we
were given fewer and fewer coloring assignments and by the fourth
grade we were more or less crayon-free. This was, at least to
those of us with artistic integrity, such as me, Calvano, and
Picarillo, a relief. So it came as something of a shock to find
ourselves in 6th grade with ditto sheets before us.

Mrs. Ruffalo was out with the flu, and our
substitute had chosen to make life easy for herself by passing
out Thanksgiving ditto sheets to color. Turkeys, cornucopias,
pilgrims. We were all dumbfounded.

"Heres a tip," said the sub,
whos name is now lost to history. "Do you see those
ears of corn? Well, it would be much more festive if, instead of
just coloring them YELLOW, you pretended they were ears of INDIAN
corn. Who knows what colors the kernels of Indian corn are?
Yes--" She looked down at her class chart.
"Patty?"

"Red and brown and brownish red and orange
and maroon and ALL THE COLORS OF AUTUMN LEAVES!" said Patty.
Calvano stuck his index finger down his throat and pretended to
vomit into his desk while the sub said, "EXACTLY right,
Patty, and what an imaginative way to put it!"

Calvano began to color his ears of corn black,
one kernel at a time. He was hoping the sub would ask him why he
was coloring them black and he was planning to say that they
waited a little too long to pick his corn and it had started to
rot, "Like Pete Cooks teeth," but he didnt
get the chance.

"What is THIS?" said the sub. She
picked up Picarillos dittoed pilgrim. Picarillo had done a
pretty fair job with the Pilgrims garb-- hed gone
over the entire ensemble very lightly with the flat of his black
crayon, so it was almost a delicate gray, and then added some
purple highlights. It wasnt historically accurate, but as a
fashion statement it was tops. That was not what the sub was
objecting to, though-- it was the face of the pilgrim. Picarillo
had colored the face a walnut brown, and fringed it with course
brown hair. Coarse brown hair also poked out of the sleeves and
covered the pilgrims hands. Picarillo had also REDRAWN the
face, so that the nose now consisted of two large round nostrils.
And he had changed the pilgrims closed mouth to an open
one, in which an impressive set of fangs was visible.

"Explain this," said the sub.

"Well, its Thanksgiving," said
Picarillo. There was a long pause.

"Thats right," said the sub.
"Its Thanksgiving, not Halloween. So WHY DID YOU DRAW
A WEREWOLF?"

"Its so... WRONG," cried Patty.
Her lower lip was quivering. The idea that Picarillo would take a
decent pilgrim and turn him into a werewolf had brought to the
verge of tears. Tears of rage, perhaps.

"Its not a werewolf," said
Calvano. "Its Thanksgiving. So its gotta be a
GIANT APE. Im sure thats what Picarillo was about to
say."

"A giant ape," said the sub.

"Yesm," said Calvano. "You
see, on Thanksgiving, they always show Giant Ape movies.
Its a tradition going back generations. They start out with
"King Kong" at 10 AM, and then "Son of Kong,"
at noon, and thats a real short one, and then "Mighty
Joe Young" at one oclock. An then they start all
over again."

"Well, I dont usually watch
"Mighty Joe Young." Its not really much of a
Thanksgiving movie. Its got a giant ape, but he
doesnt fight dinosaurs or anything."

"King Kong kills the tyrannosaurus by
BREAKING Its JAW," said Rinfret.

"Rinfret is correct," said Calvano.
"Q.E.D. He strangles a giant water snake. And he also beats
a pterodactyl to death."

"Make them STOP," said Patty.

"He HAD to beat the pterodactyl to death,
Patty. It was going to eat Fay Wray." Calvano turned to the
sub. "Patty should probably celebrate Thanksgiving by
watching just Mighty Joe Young. Its not as Thanksgivingy as
"King Kong," but its better than nothing. At
least its a large ape. I dont think we can really
call him a GIANT ape. Hes not 60 feet high or anything. I
think hes just ten feet or so."

"Why are all the kernels of corn in your
cornucopia black?" demanded the sub.

"Are they?" said Calvano. "My
goodness, youre right. I had intended to color them all the
colors of autumn leaves, but PATTYS hogging all the good
crayons."

Patty disputed this bitterly. Later in the
playground we speculated that she probably wasnt going to
watch any giant ape movies at all on Thanksgiving. Some people
just cant get into the holiday spirit.

ROOTING
FOR TRUFFLES

An interesting thing happened on Veterans
Day, and you may have missed it. There was an international
charity truffle auction. A whole bunch of truffles were auctioned
off, and the MEGA truffle went for $35,000.

As I read the various newspaper and wire
service accounts of this event, it slowly became evident to me
that what I mean by the word truffle and what
everybody else means by the word truffle are very
different. I was always under the impression that it was either
the cloth thing your grandmother drapes over the arms of her
grotesquely overstuffed sofa, or else the thing you bang around
in badminton. Apparently, it is not. Apparently a truffle is
something EDIBLE.

So, in order to better understand what I was
reading, I called up my cousin, who eats a lot, and asked him,
and he said it was this kind of crappy chocolate thing. $35,000
seems like a lot to pay for a piece of crappy chocolate, but I
did some leg work and visited the chocolate store at the mall,
and indeed, it turns out that a truffle IS a sort of wavy piece
of chocolate, and actually pretty good. Moreover, the whole box
only cost me seven bucks (which in theory I can deduct from my
taxes as a business expense, although the IRS has been operating
under a different theory lately), so this prize truffle was
obviously something special. It weighed in at 2.2 pounds, but
while thats a pretty hefty amount of chocolate, my BOX was
nearly a pound, so even if we assume the prize truffle was TEN
TIMES as good as my truffles were, we should still be well under
$100. I read the wire service stories a little more closely --in
general when doing this kind of research I dont get much
beyond the first couple of paragraphs, since the crazy lady next
door is playing her record of "Abba Dabba Honeymoon"
over and over again and it is VERY hard to concentrate-- and I
came across the line:

This naturally got me to wondering, "WHAT
2.2 pound mushroom?" They were buying mushrooms as well as
truffles? And theres a 2.2 pound specimen of EACH?

Well, at this point I may as well flip over all
the card, as they used to say on "Whats My Line,"
and explain that truffle means not only the wavy
chocolate thing, but also certain kinds of mushrooms, and this
poor slob got suckered into buying the mushroom. However, believe
it or not, we still havent gotten to the interesting part
yet, so bear with me.

The following paragraph is verbatim as it
appears in the Associated Press version of this story. I found
something in here... rather odd. See if you can spot it.

"The rare mushroom caused a spirited
bidding war between Pytka, Tony May, the owner of San Domenico
restaurant in New York and a dog named Gunther IV, heir to a
large German fortune, whose bids were made by owner Maurizio
Dial."

I read that maybe 5 times and it didnt
make any more sense the fifth time than it did the first. I
dont have a problem with a dog being the heir to a large
German fortune. If youve got a large German fortune and you
dont want to leave it to me, Hell, go ahead and leave it to
a dog. I would suggest, in fact, that this Gunther be made the
DEFAULT heir to all large German fortunes. "Horst, you
ungrateful child! If you dont pick up your room THIS
INSTANT, we shall disinherit you and leave OUR ENTIRE LARGE
GERMAN FORTUNE TO GUNTHER!" But I digress.

The part I found confusing was "...whose
bids were made by owner Maurizio Dial." So I continued
reading-- and by this point "Abba Dabba Honeymoon" was
really blasting, so believe me, it wasnt easy-- and arrived
at:

"May bid from his New York restaurant,
where a boisterous crowd of 120 joined the action. Gunther was at
the castle of Grinzane Cavour, just outside Alba, which is home
to the enormous white truffle. About 350 people were gathered at
the castle to participate in the bidding."

Im sorry to say this is the last
reference to Gunther in the story, so I have no idea how Gunther
told Maurizio when to bid and when to say, "Enough. Too
much! Let this Joe Pytka person have the mushroom!" (or,
since Gunther is a dog, to say "Eruff. Roo rush! Ret ris Roe
Rytka rerson raf re rushroom!")

Other unanswered questions include, but are not
limited to: (1) how come Gunthers owner has an Italian
first name but apparently swiped his last name from a bar of
soap? (2) what kind of a name is "Grinzane Cavour"? It
sounds like something from one of these crummy new Star Wars
movies. Yet, it probably is NOT. (3) What in Gods name is
Michael Jackson thinking about with that nose? It looks like he
got it done YET AGAIN. Where does he find plastic surgeons
willing to do this to him? At least that third nostril has
finally closed up, but geez. (4) Why does Gunther the dog WANT
this big truffle? What was he planning to do with it? (5) why
does ANYBODY want this big truffle? I realize were talking
about a BIG big truffle, the Anna Nicole Smith of truffledom, but
still, its just a big mushroom. Gunther is a dog, so maybe
he thought it was the chocolate kind.

The real big unanswered question, though, is:
how come all these news organizations totally buried the DOG
angle of the story? Ho hum, ANOTHER story about a wealthy dog in
a bidding war over a giant mushroom. Zzzzzz. I admit its
not quite as interesting as "Giant Mushroom in Bidding War
Over Wealthy Dog," but still. You would think. You would
just think.

EMERGENCY PASTA

Sometimes we are in the mood for pasta but we
have no pasta. Or we have pasta, but instead of GOOD pasta, which
is shaped like little radiators, it turns out to be angel hair,
which you hate but you bought it because, well, who knows. The
fact is there are a lot of things in your cabinet and your
refrigerator that make little cartoon question marks appear above
your head when you notice them. Tuna fish helper? Well, I guess
we thought that someday we might want to help a tuna fish.
Commendable, really.

No idea who we thought we would be helping when
we bought the cous-cous. Certainly not me. Maybe we were thinking
it would come in handy should we want to make bean bags with a
sort of Middle-Eastern motif. And it makes a pretty cool sound
when you shake the box-- kind of like those rain
sticks that they sell at the those places where they sell
stuff like rain sticks. You shake it and it goes cheeez
cheeez cheeez. Maybe we were thinking about starting a
band. There are real advantages to having edible instruments.
This is assuming that cous-cous is actually edible, which is
something we can not swear to, and wont any time soon,
since the expiration date on this box is Nov99. No, the only
thing we can say for certain is we are not going to call
ourselves we any longer. Its getting crowded in
here. And in the refrigerator, too. This block of tofu, for
instance. How did THAT happen? Was I dating Jenna Elfman?
Probably not, but its the only explaination I can think of.
Unless I needed to make something out of PlayDough and discovered
that tofu is actually cheaper. Heaven knows it doesnt taste
nearly as good. And heres a bag of salad-- not the kind
made out of decent, light green iceberg lettuce, which has no
taste at all if youve got enough brains to smother it with
ranch dressing, but some DARK GREEN LEAVES which have a flavor so
strong that your taste buds start screaming for mercy before you
even open the bag. I must have been in a fugue state when I was
in the produce aisle. What IS this stuff? It might as well have
come off some kind of... PLANT, or something. And now its
three weeks past Halloween and theres not a single tiny
little candy bar left. (Well, there wasnt a single tiny
little candy bar left after breakfast the day after Halloween,
but thats neither here nor there). Okay, hang on, Im
about to switch pronouns again.

So thats the current situation. You WANT
one kind of food, and you cant have it. You have to either
NOT EAT, or EAT SOMETHING ELSE. If you decide on Option One [NOT
EAT], you may as well stop reading this and get right down to it,
and best of luck to you. If you go with the Eat Something
Else option, you will soon come to another fork in the
road: eat something which is on hand but which you dont
like, or MAKE SOMETHING YOU DO LIKE OUT OF OTHER STUFF. The
objective is pasta. So we begin with the question: just what IS
pasta? Lets make a list of what we know about it. (1) It is
this STUFF. (2) Its not so good when its uncooked,
unlike, for instance, cookie batter, which is actually BETTER
before its cooked. (3) It comes in a variety of shapes,
which implies that in the larval stage it was relatively soft and
shapable. Looking around the apartment for something that fills
all these criteria, we come up with: (1) wet newspapers and (2)
left over slivers of soap in the soap dish. Could one of these
things be the elusive UR-pasta from which pasta itself springs?
Probably not. So we need to return to the cabinet, the one with
the Nov99 cous-cous, and see if we can find something else.

Ah-- a LOAF of BREAD. Now, rumor has it that
pasta is made from grain, as is bread. In theory, we could solve
our basic dilemma (hunger) by eating some bread. But that would
be stupid, because we could have done that half an hour ago. No,
instead we will take a single slice of bread, and using the heel
of our hand, we will FLATTEN it. Now we have a piece of bread,
which is both flat and smooth-- and also PLIABLE. Yes, when we
eat this, no matter what shape it finally takes, it will taste
like a piece of bread (at least if we remembered to wash our
hands before we flattened it) but it is darn well going to LOOK
like pasta. Our favorite pasta happens to be the aforementioned
radiator-shaped ones, but that might be a little beyond us at the
moment, and there is nothing wrong with penne or shells In fact,
we are feeling pretty ambitious, so we are going to go for BOW
TIES.

Well. We should have remembered that tying a
bow tie is a lot more difficult than it looks, which is why
Denzel Washington wore a clip-on to the Oscars last year. But the
good thing about this flattened bread is, its very
forgiving. You can make a fold, realize its a screw up,
unfold it, and after a few whacks, its as good as new. We
take another shy at the bow tie, but the folds are a little too
sharp and the angles are wrong. It looks kind of like a paper
airplane. It looks A LOT like a paper airplane. But turns out
its not aerodynamically sound. Uh, I mean, Im
GUESSING its not aerodynamically sound. But thats
okay. I have just invented FOOD ORAGAMI.

Inventing a new art form makes you pretty
hungry, so Im going to go out and get something to eat.
Meanwhile, I invite all my readers to flatten a piece of bread
and see what they can come up with, food-origami-wise. Since
theyre edible, not to mention perishable, it would be best
to share your work with us via photographs, rather than bringing
them to the newspaper office, but use your own judgment.

ASK THE CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

For most of my adult life I have been an avid
cross-country skier. Of course this requires a lot of strength
training, especially in the off-season. Now that I am in my early
forties, I notice that I seem to be losing some flexibility. What
sort of cross-training can you suggest to improve my flexibility
without sacrificing the strength Ive worked so hard to
achieve and maintain?

(signed)

AVID CROSS COUNTRY SKIER

DEAR AVID:

First of all, my congratulations on your
healthy life style. Cross-country skiing (or "X-Country
Skiing" as we in the biz like to say) is a great
way to keep in shape. And you are right to be concerned about
flexibility. As we grow older, we lose much of our natural
suppleness. You dont mention exactly what sort of
strength training you are doing so its
difficult for me to be precise in my recommendations. Generally
speaking, an excellent way to increase flexibility is to drink a
lot of beer. This will undo much of the unfortunate stiffness in
the abdominal muscles, which occurs when we overtrain them via
crunches and sit-ups. You will be surprised sat how a mere two or
three six packs a day will dis-harden the abs in just a week or
so.

*

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

Im something of a gym rat, and my
absolute favorite move is the dumbbell curl on the incline bench.
It goes without saying that I have biceps to die for, not just
big but long. However, as Ive increased the weight of the
dumbbell, Ive noticed that my delts are also getting
something of a workout, and Im not interested in delts,
just in biceps. What can I do to isolate the bicep during this
move? I realize that in a sense that this is kind of the ultimate
ANTI-cross training question, but if you cant answer it,
who can?

(signed)

SOMETHING OF A GYM RAT

DEAR SOMETHING:

Your answer is embedded in the question itself.
You say "...as Ive increased the weight of the
dumbbell..." Well, keep the weight of the dumbbell down tom
something you can handle easily for 20 or so reps-- probably
about 30 pounds, certainly no more than 50. You need to be able
to complete the exercise without moving your upper arm at all,
just the forearm. Otherwise you engage the deltoid, and this is
exactly whats happening.

*

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

I have been practicing the Martial Arts for
several years, with especial emphasis on karate. It seems to me
that this training gives me everything I want-- speed, agility,
strength, plus the chiseled look that chicks cant get
enough of. I move like a cat and I can punch a hole in a steel
plate with my toe. So my question is basically rhetorical: What
could cross training give me that Im not already getting?

(signed)

KA-CHING!

DEAR KA-CHING,

Some sports require so much of the devotee that
to have mastered them, you have already engaged in cross training
whether you know it or not. If karate were a sport, it would be
such a sport. Unfortunately, as you have acknowledged at the
outset of your letter, it is not a sport but an ART. While the
Cross-Training Expert Guy has the highest regard for all of the
arts, lets face it, they are for wussy-boys. So just keep
on with your sissy martial ARTS, and dont worry your pretty
little head about cross training. Leave that to the GUYS, Karate
Boy. Hey, before you punch a hole in that steel plate with your
toe, do you paint the toenail? Woo woo! Ooh-la-la!

*

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

Ive been a runner for a couple of decades
and I love it. But theres no question I could use some more
upper body strength. What sort of work out would you recommend?

(signed)

RUNNER

DEAR RUNNER:

Two of the best upper body strength builders
are: (1) Installing your girl friends air conditioner, and
(2) playing air guitar. Both have their advantages and
disadvantages, and both also include the word air in
them. If you go with (1), the downside is, you have to keep
coming up with reasons why her air conditioner has to be taken
out and put in the same window every couple of days. The big
advantage is, you also get great flexibility training since air
conditioner installing is inevitably followed by drinking beer
(see letter one, above, for benefits of this). The great
advantage of playing air guitar is, you can do it anywhere, any
time, and unlike air conditioner installing, which requires a
certain minimum expenditure of calories if youre going to
get it in the window, you can adjust the intensity of your air
guitar playing to fit your mood. You can even do one of those
really slow, lame Pink Floyd type solos and burn so few calories
you actually GAIN weight. Choose whichever upper body strength
builder best suits your busy life style and embarrassment
threshold.

*

IMPORTANT CROSS-TRAINING REMINDER!!

Dont forget to cross-train one of the 5
or 6 most important muscles in your body-- the brain! Without the
brain, some of the other muscles probably wouldnt work
properly-- and if they did, how would you know? Keep your brain
strong and limber by THINKING ABOUT STUFF while working your
other muscles. For instance, try to recall all seven of The
Magnificent Seven. Everybody thinks the one they wont
remember is Horst Bucholtz, but its not. Nobody ever
forgets Horst Bucholtz. Some people have spent 20 years in
analysis trying unsuccessfully to forget Horst. No, we all
remember Horst, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Colburn,
Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn. The hard one is the OTHER
guy, who calls Yul Brynner "You old Creole
son-of-a-gun" in the hope that well go, oh,
hes CREOLE, thats why he talks with a Russian
accent...

*

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

I am a body builder. Lately Ive noticed
that my muscles, while they are getting larger and larger, are
also sort of short and bulky, and I can no longer get as much
extension in, for instance, my military press. What do you
suggest?

(signed)

BODY BUILDER

DEAR BODY BUILDER:

This is a very common problem with
bodybuilding. Basically, it happens because you guys are really,
really stupid. Even a moderate amount of stretching after your
weight training would help considerably. Any of the oriental
disciplines, such as Yoga or Sushi, practiced twice a week, would
be an excellent idea. *

DEAR CROSS TRAINING EXPERT GUY:

Last week my girl friend caught me trying on
her angora sweater. Well, actually I was trying on her bra as
well. Anyway, since then, things have cooled off considerably
between us. How can I convince her that my predilection for
wearing her clothing is not sick, just unusual?

(signed)

Ted

DEAR TED:

I am the cross TRAINING expert guy. I passed
your letter on to the CROSS DRESSING expert guy. He recommends
free-weight training at least three days a week, alternating with
a three mile run on your off days.

TEENAGE
WEREWOLVES

"Youre too old for this," said
my dad. I was standing in front of the mirror in the upstairs
hall checking out my ensemble. Sneakers, jeans, striped t-shirt,
windbreaker. I turned up the collar of the windbreaker, James
Dean style. I would have combed my hair back, but it was rubber,
as were my pointed ears and my fangs. This year I was stuck with
the cheap $3.50 werewolf mask and Picarillo got to wear the
Deluxe Custom $25 over-the-head job with ACTUAL HAIR and
mobile mouth feature, which allowed him to snarl and
bare the ($4) Deluxe Ivory-ette Fangs. "Youve been too
old for this for about 5 years," my father continued.
"Youre just going to embarrass yourselves again."

Last year-- when it had been MY turn to wear
the Deluxe Custom $25 over-the-head job-- Calvano, Picarillo and
I had encountered a great deal of resistance among the
householders to whom we appealed for treats. We were all a full
head taller than the other trick-or-treaters, and a lot of people
simply refused to give us anything. The nadir of the evening--
perhaps of our lives-- was reached when we arrived at Dr.
Fergussens house. The doctor told us to grow up and was
about to slam the door in our hairy faces, but his wife
admonished him, "George! Dont you understand-- these
are SPECIAL boys..." She gave us generous amounts of candy
and told us to give her best to Mrs. Entwistle, who was in charge
of the, uh, Special Kids at school. This would have remained a
private humiliation, with a silver lining that must have run to
about 5000 chocolate-fueled calories, but Picarillo chose to brag
about it the next day in school. Believe it or not, instead of
being the objects of universal admiration and envy, some of our
classmates actually chose to mock us. When Mrs. Ruffalo asked
Calvano to answer a history question that afternoon, Victor
Santella said, "Better talk ve-ry SLOW-LY, Mizz Ruffalo...
Calvano is a SPECIAL CHILD..." Mrs. Ruffalo said as far as
she was concerned ALL her students were special children, but
Victor said, "Not THAT kind of special," and told her
the entire story. At the conclusion, Mrs. Ruffalo laughed
uproariously. Nowadays, of course, we could have filed some sort
of Self-Esteem Depravation lawsuit, but at that time we could do
nothing but turn the color of cranberry juice. Matters were not
helped when Calvano had to ask Mrs. Ruffalo to repeat her
question. When the laughter died down, she did-- VE-RY SLOW-LY.
The laughter took a lot longer to die down that time.

So we had every reason in the world not to go
trick or treating again. But Calvano wouldnt even consider
it. "Were FINALLY big enough to be TEENAGE WEREWOLVES.
FINALLY it makes total sense for us to be wearing our werewolf
masks AND our normal clothes at the same time. Our whole lives
have been moving towards this point. How can we NOT do it?"
Picarillo and I had no answer. So here we were, slouching in
front of our various mirrors with our hands in our pockets. Even
our lousy posture was in character. It was going to be the best
Halloween ever.

I was scrounging around for a suitable bag--
maybe a teenage werewolf would collect his treats in a gym bag?
-- when the phone rang and Calvano told me that Picarillo was
backing out. "His mom wont let him go."

"He doesnt need it if all hes
gonna do is sit home stuffing cheesecake into his big fat
mouth."

"No, he doesnt," Calvano
agreed. I ranted for about two more minutes before I realized
Calvano had hung up the phone and was, without question, already
half way to Picarillos to get the Deluxe Custom $25
over-the-head mask for himself. I bolted down the stairs and out
the door, my cheap rubber werewolf mask rippling in the wind like
Old Glory.

Calvano was just crossing the Picarillos
lawn when I tackled him. "You big stupid bum," yelled
Calvano, "You had the mask LAST year!"

"You had it the year before," I said.
I realized his argument had slightly more merit than mine did, so
I kicked him in the leg. We rolled around on the Picarillo lawn
in the gathering dusk until Mrs. Picarillo came out and invited
us in. "Michael-- your friends are here..."

Picarillo was sitting on the living room couch
eating chocolate cheesecake through the Deluxe Custom $25
over-the-head mask, thanks to the mobile mouth
feature. "This is absurd," said Calvano. "Let us
have the mask. Youre WASTING it here."

"S mine," said Picarillo. He
swallowed another mouthful of cheesecake.

"You cant just SIT ON THE COUCH
WEARING THE Deluxe Custom $25 over-the-head mask," I said.
"Its like being the greatest... uh, some kind of like
athlete or something, and then not... uh, like, well, I mean,
just, uh..."

"Shut up," said Calvano. "Give
us the mask, Picarillo."

"No," said Picarillo. He pointed to
the TV with his cheesecake-festooned fork. "Yknow
whats on? Caltiki, Immortal Monster. Its
an ITALIAN monster movie. Only its in English. Sort
of."

"Picarillo," I said,
"Youre not even wearing THE FANGS!! I call, either you
gotta wear the fangs or you gotta give us the mask. No call
backs."

"No," said Picarillo.

"This is a stupid movie," said
Calvano. "Its like The Blob, only instead
of using Jell-O, they used a chicken liver or something."

"Yeah, but when it eats somebody, instead
of totally absorbing EVERYTHING, it spits out the skeleton,"
said Picarillo.

"Whoa!!" I said. Calvano and I were
not sitting on the couch. Mrs. Picarillo put plates of her
chocolate cheesecake in front of us.

"Well, how about this," said Calvano.
"Every commercial, you pass the mask to one of us. We take
turns. Thats fair."

"No."

"You could wear it every other commercial.
Youd get the mask twice as much as either one of us."

"No."

Caltiki spit out somebodys skeleton.
Calvano and I had to roll up the bottoms of our masks to eat. We
slouched on the sofa watching TV and glomming cheesecake for the
next hour and half, the most authentic teenage werewolves ever.

THOROUGHLY
DISGRUNTLED

"Youre gonna be dealing with the
public-- probably for the first time in your life-- so there are
a few things you gotta understand," the old guy was telling
me. The old guy, Hank, was the manager of the Park Theater in
Caldwell, New Jersey, and I had just been hired as an usher.
"Number one, the customer is always right. B, if you
dont keep your shirttail tucked in, the customer will lose
all respect for you. Fourthly, sometimes this soda machine
doesnt drop the cup at the right time. When this happens,
and the customer comes to you, direct them to the manager what
happens to be on duty, which will give them a form to fill out
and send in to the main office in case they should want a refund.
If they say they want a stamp, well, we do not provide that and
say you are sorry. Lastly, make sure you shave even if you think
its gonna make you a couple of minutes late because the
couple of minutes is no big deal in this particular type job so
long as you dont do it more than a couple times but you
show up unshaved, and then people think somebody in the Manson
family is showing them to their seat. And lastly, let a smile be
your umbrella. Even if you feel lousy, keep smiling, because
after all, what is a smile but a frown turned upside down."
Hank shook my hand and asked if I had any questions. I told him
no, that he had covered everything that I was curious about.

This was true, since I had not been wondering
about anything related to my new job. Ushering doesnt
require a great deal of training-- as Hank once said in an
unguarded moment, "A monkey could do it if you could get him
to shave and keep his shirt tucked in, but thats a lot of
ifs. That J. Fred Muggs, though, he kills me."
The usher comes to the job fully equipped to perform almost all
of his functions, with one exception, which Hank hinted at in his
address: the usher must be TAUGHT how to deal with disgruntled
customers.

You are, lets say, a minimum wage usher.
People will (quite rightly) complain to you about spilled soda on
the floor, out-of-focus projection, the lack of toilet paper in
the ladies room, and smokers in the non-smoking section
[the Park Theater was operating back in the era when the smoking
section was indoors]. These are all things that you can at least
attempt to correct in your capacity as a minimum wage usher. Even
the most clueless 16-year-old in the throes of hormonal upheaval
can dimly perceive that patrons are entitled to toilet paper.
Some customers will also complain to you about the horrible fake
butter on the popcorn or the obscene price of the Milk Duds.
There is nothing you can do about this sort of thing, but you can
shake your head in sympathy and promise to speak to the manager
about it. Possibly you may find yourself wondering how it is that
you, barely literate sub-moron that you are, have been well aware
that movie popcorn butter is horrible since you were about 8
years old, and that movie candy is overpriced since, oh, maybe 5
previous life times ago, while this middle-aged woman in the Lord
and Taylor Gucci knock off or that 40-year-old man with the
grotesque ponytail and the No Blood for Oil button is
acting like this OUTRAGEOUS turn of events has JUST NOW come to
her or his attention. Still, you do-- theoretically-- have the
managers ear, so these folks are really just using you as a
flesh and blood analog to those "Please Tell Us How You
Liked Your Visit" cards at Friendlys.

Its hard to say what the disgruntled
customer is thinking when he button holes you (you are still the
16 year old minimum wage usher, but now its 2002 rather
than 1974 so I can toss in some current pop culture references
for the kids who are still baffled about the J. Fred Muggs non
sequitor) and vents his feelings about the inadequate acting, the
inept plotting, or the sad fact that the people in some foreign
films speak a foreign language. Surely the D.C. knows that you
are not going to pull out your cell phone and berate Kevin Spacy
for collecting that hefty paycheck for a disgraceful performance
(What HAPPENED to you, Kevin? You used to be razor sharp and
sleek as a weasel, and now youre going all warm and fuzzy!
And meanwhile, Robin Williams, who the D.C. and I had written off
about 10 years ago, after his 8th lovable doctor part
in a row, has been born again HARD. Did you guys switch bodies,
like Buffy and the evil girl whose name I dont remember in
that episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?). He must
suspect you arent about to call Miramax and tell them that,
dammit, ONE MORE SCRIPT REVISION wouldnt have broken the
budget. And yet, here he is, haranguing YOU about it. Possibly
even demanding his money back.

People will demand their money back for some
amazing reasons. While I was ushering at the Park, -- now
were back to 1974 and you arent the
usher, I am-- we ran a Frankenstein triple bill.
"Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein," and
"Son of Frankenstein," all starring Boris Karloff as
the monster. I was prepared for people complaining because the
movies were in black and white-- this happened often enough. I
was prepared for people complaining that they had seen these very
movies on TV for free. That happened fairly often as well. I was
not prepared for complaints about Boris Karloffs costume.

"I would like to speak to the
manager," said the disgruntled customer. "I think a
refund is in order. I dont know what you think youre
pulling here. Inna first two movies, Frankenstein wears a black
shirt an a black jacket kind of thing. So far you following
me? Then in the third one, all of a sudden hes wearing a
SWEATER."

"???" I said.

"So how does Frankenstein get the sweater?
Does he have a bachelor pad we dont know about, with all
kinds of sharp clothes? I dont think so. I think somebody
pulled a fast one. And I dont like being played for a
sucker. Am I supposed to be so stupid I dont know the
difference between a jacket and a big woolly sweater? It TOTALLY
wrecked the movie."

I alerted the manager on duty. This evening it
was not Hank but the assistant, Chuck. "Gennelman with a
complaint about the movie," I said. Chuck listened
attentively to the D.C.

"Why do you think were pulling a
fast one?" asked Chuck when the customer repeated-- almost
verbatim-- his plaint.

"Ill tell you what I think. I think
you guys screwed up. I think theres a MISSING Frankenstein
movie where he gets the sweater. And you guys forgot to get
it."

"Ah. Im afraid youve got us.
We tried, but "The L.L. Bean Catalogue of Frankenstein"
was unavailable for this weekend. We were hoping you
wouldnt notice."

The customer was speechless for several beats,
and then said: "Frankenstein shouldnt be wearing that
sweater."

Chuck said, "Hes not. If youd
been paying any attention to anything but sweaters, youd
know Frankenstein is the name of the DOCTOR, not the
MONSTER."

"Oh yeah? Well, then whats the
MONSTERS name?"

"I. P. Daily," said Chuck. This
effectively ended the conversation. I was kind of awestruck.
Chuck had managed to pacify an angry patron of the arts WITHOUT
giving him a refund.

And, I had learned the real name of the
Frankenstein monster to boot.

YOGA
T-SHIRT

I would have put the t-shirt in my gym bag, but
the cop made me nervous. Im not one of those guys who gets
nervous every time a police car appears in the rear view mirror,
but this cop wasnt in my rear view mirror, and I
didnt have any pants on.

Well, I guess I should say I didnt have
my pants TOTALLY on. I had one trouser leg pretty much all the
way up, but the other leg--the LEG leg, not the trouser leg-- was
caught in the steering wheel. It had been this way for maybe
three minutes when the cop showed up. Three minutes is not a very
long time, but when your foot is caught in the steering wheel it
seems like a very long time. In fact, the only reason I know that
it was three minutes and not eight minutes or half an hour is, I
had the radio on, and the same song was playing when the cop
showed up that had been playing when my foot got stuck. I forget
the name of it, but it was a big hit a year or so ago, some girl
singer wanting to thank somebody for the best day of her life. It
was a hit single so it got to be three, three and a half minutes,
tops, but just before the cop showed up I remember thinking,
this is the longest song Ive ever heard.

"Excuse me, sir," the cop said.
"Is everything all right?"

"Not everything," I admitted. "I
wonder if you could maybe unhook my foot from the steering wheel?
I cant quite reach it."

The cop put his gloves on before he would
unhook my foot. This might be department procedure, and then
again it might have something else. Personally, I feel sure it
was the former. When my foot and the steering wheel had once more
gone their separate ways, the cop said, "So."

"Thank you, officer," I said.

"You know sir, I was parked over there
behind the dumpster, and I was observing you for a while--"

"Why were you parked behind the
dumpster??"

"Sir. Bear with me. I saw you pull in
here, which in itself is unusual, since there are plenty of
parking places in front of the store--"

"Yes. But there are PEOPLE there,
too."

"Yes sir. So I found myself wondering if
perhaps you werent pulling into this area BEHIND the story
because you didnt wish to be observed doing whatever it is
that you were planning to do."

"Exactly, officer. See, I have a yoga
class today."

"In your car."

"No, no. Well, the fact is, I have two
yoga classes today-- I had one that ended about an hour and a
half ago, and another one that starts in about an hour. So I
drove over here to have some lunch at the food court, and then I
decided it would be a good idea to change my clothes for
class--"

"They dont have bathrooms at this
yoga place."

"Well, they do, but its almost all
girls. You know what that means."

"Do I?"

"For one thing, it means the lines are
endless, and for another thing, it means nobody else can use the
bathroom while Im in there, so the lines will get even more
endless. So out of politeness, I thought Id better change
before I got back to class."

"Sir, while I was observing you, it
appeared that you changed several times."

"No, no. See, first I took off my pants.
Then I took off the gym shorts I was wearing this morning,
because I kind of sweat right through them?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Telling you? I mean, TELLING YOU. I sweat right through
them. So then I put on my OTHER gym shorts."

"Do you always bring multiple gym
shorts?"

"No, but this is a three-day INTENSIVE,
and yesterday, which was day one, I sweat through my clothes, so
I figured today I might too, so I brought an extra pair. And a
good thing. So I put on the other gym shorts."

"Now at that point, sir, I would have
thought your job was done..."

"Well, yeah. No reason in the world I
couldnt have driven back in my gym shorts."

"Just what I was thinking."

"But I wasnt. Thinking, I mean. So I
put my pants back on. And THEN I thought, as you did, no
reason I cant just drive back in my gym shorts."

"So this is the point where you take off
your pants again."

"I got one leg off. Then I thought,
Well, wait, I got the pants ON, I might as well leave them
on and at that point I got stuck." I wanted to say
For THREE MINUTES, but I thought the cop might think
I was accusing him of dogging it.

"A lot of guys would have gotten into the
back seat to change. Would have taken the steering wheel right
out of the equation."

"I didnt want to get out of the car
because it was raining."

"Oh. I thought perhaps you were this big
deal YOGA guy and you figured you could twist your way around the
steering wheel. Become ONE with the steering wheel or whatever
you guys go with steering wheels."

"Um," I explained.

"Just kidding. Actually, sir, I would have
thought youd have wanted to get out of the car because of
the smell."

"The smell?"

"Something very... funky. Possibly
THAT." He pointed to my morning class t-shirt, which I had
draped over the passenger side headrest in the hope that it would
dry. Which hope had not yet been fulfilled. This is probably the
point where, had I not been made nervous, the t-shirt would have
gone into my gym bag. "Well, youve got your foot out
of the steering wheel, so I suppose its safe for me to send
you on your way."

"Um."

"I would suggest-- I say
suggest, but its really more than a
suggestion-- that you either get the pants all the way on or all
the way off. Im not certain this is actually required by
law, but I feel its a very good idea."

"Yes, officer, I agree."

"THAT is a comfort, I must say." The
cop stepped away from the car and averted his eyes discreetly
while I shucked the pants and put on my sneakers. "Please
drive carefully, sir."

Several hours later I was telling this amusing
anecdote-- the one youve just read-- to my charming and
lovely dinner companion as I drove her back to her home, and as I
got to the part where the cop was saying Something...
funky. Possibly THAT," I pointed to the head rest which she
happened to be at that moment resting her head on, and I noticed
that the t-shirt was still there, as did she.

On the plus side, this lent a great deal of
verisimilitude to my story.

The minus side is FAR too extensive to go into
here, and besides, it would only depress you.

THE FRENCH TOAST
EXPERT GUY

STRIKES BACK

In general my "Ask the Expert Guy"
columns get very little feedback, as most people stop reading
them as soon as they realize its an "Ask the Expert
Guy" column, but last weeks "French Toast Expert
Guy" triggered a torrent of abuse the likes of which I
havent seen since 1987, when I suggested Mother Theresa
might be pretty hot if shed do something with her hair.
Anyway, last week I, or rather the Expert Guy I was channeling,
suggested that French Toast batter and pancake batter were
essentially the same thing. I suppose I could try to weasel out
of it by saying that I knew very well that this is not the case,
and that my assertion was just one more knee slapper in a column
crammed with them. "That so-called French Toast Expert
Guy," you were possibly intended to say as you wiped the
tears of laughter from your eyes, "doesnt even know
how to make French Toast!"

Well, I have to admit thats simply not
the case. Like the Expert Guy himself, I didnt do any
research on French Toast before launching to the column, and it
turns out that, as the most civil of my critics said,
"F.Y.I. French toast is made with bread, eggs, a little milk
and a splash of vanilla if you are brave. No waffle batter
involved at all..." Or, as the least civil of my critics
said, "...this was the worst column ever and thats
really saying something. Only a moron would say you make French
toast with pancake batter. Its not funny its just
stupid, JUST LIKE THE AUTHOR. Sometimes I am ashamed to be your
daughter." In all, no fewer than 9 people wrote (or stopped
me on the street) to share their French toast recipes and a few
paragraphs of semi-literate invective.

I mentioned in the column-- and this happens to
be true-- that while I was in Boy Scouts, I did indeed make
French Toast using pancake batter and it was perfectly okay.
Nonetheless, when nine people take the time to tell you how to
make French Toast, you better pay attention. So I had planned to
take spend perhaps two sentences giving the real recipe for
French Toast, and then launching into something else entirely.

And then I decided to take a look at the
ingredients of my own pancake mixes. As it happens, I have two:
Aunt Jemima, and Bisquick. It was an eye opener.

First of all, the Aunt Jemima box is labeled
"PANCAKE AND WAFFLE MIX." I mention this because in my
column I said pancake and waffle mix were the same thing. Now, no
one disputed this, but I wasnt 100% sure, and its
nice to be proven right. Second of all, Aunt Jemima isnt
wearing that thing on her head any more, and shes lost a
lot of weight. She looks kind of like Oprah in the
after pictures in this weeks National Enquirer
cover story-- "Oprahs New $250,000 Body." If they
do an Aunt Jemima movie, Angela Bassett could play her. In fact,
I dont know if even Angel is buff enough or young enough to
pull it off. Maybe Venus Williams, although theres no
question Angela has the acting chops. Third of all, the recipe on
the box calls for: MIX (mostly flour, a little sugar, some
leavening) (and it doesnt count anyway), MILK, and EGGS.
(plus a little oil). Got that? MILK, EGGS, and mix. Hmm, MILK AND
EGGS. Where have I heard THAT before?

Now we move onto the Bisquick box. Just for the
record, theres no picture of anybody on the box, unless you
count FDR, whose profile is (badly) rendered (twice) on the
drawing of two dimes which for some reason illustrates step
three ("Your School Gets a Check") of the
"Earn Cash for Your School-- Box Tops for Education"
advertisement on the back of the box. This recipe calls for mix
(which doesnt count), MILK and EGGS. Not even a little oil.
Hmm, milk and eggs, milk and eggs... Gosh... thats
definitely ringing a bell... let me see... wasnt that...
THE RECIPE FOR FRENCH TOAST?

It seems to me that A LOT OF PEOPLE owe me an
apology. Im not saying youve got to crawl on your
belly like a reptile. But I AM saying that most of you signed
your names, and I have a weekly newspaper column.

Now you may be thinking, "Well, YOU
didnt know you TOTALLY NAILED the French Toast recipe, you
were just guessing and you ACCIDENTALLY GOT IT 100% CORRECT
except for the oil (if you go with the Aunt Jemima recipe)."
True. But my CRITICS, who all thought THEY were REALLY THE FRENCH
TOAST EXPERT GUYS (although a lot of them were chicks), turned
out to be WOEFULLY IGNORANT ABOUT PANCAKE MIX.

Now, this is not a crime. Im ignorant
about a lot of stuff myself. Super string theory? Beats me.
Lacrosse? Just looks like a lot of guys running around whacking
each other with sticks to me, unless its an all girl team.
That stuff that you use to clean out those things that look kind
of like enormous pieces of pasta which they have on battleships
in old World War II movies? I dont have a clue. But I
dont go around WRITING TO PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPERTS ON THESE
SUBJECTS AND TELL THEM THEYRE MORONS, either. You folks--
you know who you are, and so do I-- actually did know about
French Toast. But you DIDNT know about pancake batter. So.

As I said, you dont have to abase
yourselves in order to keep your names out of next weeks
paper. A simple, "Im so sorry, Jeff-- I mean Mr.
Grimshaw-- I had no idea what I was talking about! And when I
dont, I... I guess I should keep my big mouth shut.
Sometimes I forget that youre a PROFESSIONAL type columnist
and if there was really something wrong in one of your columns,
it would never possibly get into print, as you write for a
professional newspaper. I just wish there were some way to make
it up to you. God, I feel like such a fool! And-- you know, I was
thinking about saying well, the pancake recipes call for
MIX, so pancake batter and French Toast batter really arent
the same thing --but Ill just get myself in even more
trouble if I say that-- especially if Im one of the people
who included his or her phone number along with my ill-considered
criticism-- so I guess I... I... OH GOD IM SORRY! IM
SO SORRY! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!!"

And I probably will. But the Clock is
ticking...

Ask the French Toast Expert Guy

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

You know, the thing about the French, I mean
your average French guy, when hes not writing some snotty
polemic about how we Americans are SO unsophisticated and lack
nuance and subtlety and culture and dont use the right
fork, hes walking on his ankles and screaming "Mrs.
LADY!" like Jerry Lewis. So whats the deal on French
toast? Its really delicious. So how did these cheese-eating
surrender monkeys come up with it?

(signed)

TOTALLY BAFFLED

DEAR TOTALLY:

You will be relieved to know that they
DIDNT come up with it. French toast is named for its
inventor, Mr. French, from the old TV series Family Affair. The
versatile valet also invented bubble wrap.

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

What is the exact difference between French
Toast and waffles? They taste awful similar to me.

(signed)

LIKES THEM BOTH BUT WANTS TO KNOW SO
WHATS THE DIFFERENCE ANYHOW

DEAR LIKES:

Dear me, the French Toast Expert Guy hardly
knows where to begin, so he has enlisted the aid of the Waffle
Expert Guy. Take it away, Waffle Expert Guy:

I am surprised [this is the Waffle Expert Guy
talking now] that you are confused by the similarities between
French Toast and Waffles, when of course the REAL waffle
doppleg䮧er, taste-wise, is the pancake. In fact, you can make
pancakes and waffles from precisely the same batter-- no
difference is apparent until the actual cooking stage, when
either a waffle iron (if its going to be a waffle) or a pan
(if a pancake is on the agenda) enters the equation. Your
confusion might derive from the fact that French toast is made by
dipping bread into a batter-- there are special French Toast
batters available, but pancake batter will do just fine-- and
then cooking almost exactly as you would a pancake. The
difference is, with a pancake, there is no bread involved. You
are simply COOKING THE BATTER. Now-- you might be wondering: what
if I put a slice of French Toast Bread (that is, bread soaked in
batter) into the waffle iron? The Waffle Expert Guy, who loves
talking about himself in the third person, does not recommend
this. In fact, he prefers the type of waffle iron where the
batter is poured into a small opening at the top of the already
closed waffle iron, so this isnt even an option in the
Waffle Expert Guys Kitchen. But even the more
conventional-- or anyway cheaper-- waffle iron which opens and
shuts like a suitcase-- the Shroud of Turin Expert Guy and the
NASCAR Logo Cap Expert Guy both own this type-- will not produce
the Super-Dooper-Combination-French Toast-and-Waffle that you
might be imagining. It will just make a big mess. And as the Toe
Nail Clipper Expert Guy can attest, it can even result in a nasty
kitchen fire.

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

Is French Toast a vegetable?

(signed)

Hoping it is, because in my new diet I get to
eat a lot of vegetables.

DEAR HOPING:

Yes it is.

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

Do other countries besides France have some
sort of equivalent of French Toast? It seems like such an obvious
idea, I would think it must be nearly universal, like the wheel.

(signed)

STUDENT OF CULTURE

DEAR STUDENT:

So you didnt buy the Mr. French story,
eh? Well, as it happens, many (but by no means all) other
countries have come up with a variety of French
toast. In most cases, these developed after the real
article from France was introduced, but in a few cases-- Easter
Island, Lapland, and Pittstown, NJ being the most notable-- it
appears to have developed independently. Bulgarian
toast is an interesting case, in that the traditional slice
of bread is eliminated and in its place, a large sofa cushion is
substituted. In Lithuania, neither the bread nor the batter is
employed in the creation of French Toast. Instead,
two scoops of ice cream are placed in a bowl, and then
topped, as they say in Lithuania, with whipped cream
and chocolate syrup. This is said to be quite tasty.

Thank you-- now its me, the French Toast
Expert Guy, again. Im sure you all join me in a big thank
you for the Waffle Expert Guy-- wasnt he great? Well
be sure to have him back for a visit again real soon.

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

If you are the French Toast Expert Guy,
shouldnt you be talking with a Fraunch ak-SENT?

(signed)

SUSPICIOUS

DEAR SUSPICIOUS:

Ooh la la! You hef caught se Fraunch Toast
ExPAIRT Guy with his pants down aroun his an-KLES-- just ze
way your Jerry LewIS would wear zem! Zut alors! Tres bien! May
wee! * cough * In fact, if I were the French Toast Expert Guy in
the sense that I were the TOAST expert guy who happened to be
FRENCH, I would be talking in a French accent, but a quick glance
at the other questions and answers here will show you that this
is not the case. And even if I did speak with a French accent, I
wouldnt write with one. But thank you for adding a bit of
levity to a sometimes far too serious column, Suspicious. Please
write again!

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

Is it considered gauche to add blueberries or
other fruit to the French Toast batter? After all, its not
unusual to find such things in pancake batter.

(signed)

Wondering about the cutting edge of French
Toast

DEAR WONDERING:

It wouldnt be considered gauche, but
heres the problem: with pancakes or waffles, you have a
relatively thick layer of batter in the pan or the iron, with
plenty of volume to hold a blueberry, especially one of those
gross little dried ones such as they put in pancakes or waffles.
With French toast, the batter soaks the bread but clearly no
blueberries can get inside the slice, and any blueberries in the
mix would have to stick to the outside-- not a likely scenario,
given the constant flipping of the slice. Any berries that did
manage to cling to the French toast would almost certainly be
charred beyond recognition, and not very palatable. Sorry.

* * *

DEAR FRENCH TOAST EXPERT GUY:

What was the name of the actor who played Mr.
French on "Family Affair," anyway?

(signed)

Its on the tip of my tongue

DEAR ITS:

That was the beloved character actor Sebastian
Cabot, who later went on to even greater fame as Miss Ellie on
the popular prime-time soap opera "Dallas." Interesting
factoid: For one season he was replaced in the role by Donna
Reed, but there was such a hue and cry from his devoted fans that
he was brought back the following season-- in effect, he REPLACED
HIS REPLACEMENT. The versatile valet also invented bubble wrap.

JOEY CLAMS' PLACE

The pet food store up the block was closed,
since the guy who ran the pet food store was now doing 15 years
upstate for activities probably unrelated to pet food. "This
is not good," Mulberry Street Joey Clams remarked as the pet
food store guy was handcuffed and deposited in the back seat of a
police car. "People would come down to Mulberry Street to
buy pet food for their pets, and they would pass the Custom Neon
Sign Shop. They would think to themselves, Maybe next time
I come down here I ought to order one of those neon signs.
Perhaps a sign explaining how much I am attached to the pet which
I am currently down on Mulberry Street buying pet food for.
But now that Gino has closed up shop, this will no longer
happen."

In fact, it had never happened, since no one
ever ordered any signs from our Custom Neon Sign Shop.
"Maybe Gino himself will order a large neon sign," said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "Maybe a REAL BIG neon sign that
says I am so stupid I cant tell an undercover
policeman when I see one even though Mulberry Street Joey Clams,
watching the aforementioned undercover policeman enter my store
from a block away, said to his partner Jeff, I wonder why
that undercover policeman is going into Ginos pet food
store."

For several days Mulberry Street Joey Clams
enlarged upon this theme of the symbiotic relationship between
the Custom Neon Sign Shop and Ginos pet food store.
"Since the pet food store has closed, weve had no
business. By the same token, if WE had closed up, the pet food
store would now be in dire straits financially because of OUR
customers who either own pets and would want to buy pet food as
long as they were already down here buying a neon sign, or
dont yet own pets, but would see the pet food store and
think a pet would maybe be nice to have, and convenient in that
there is a pet food store right near the place where they get
their Custom Neon Signs."

A couple of months went by, and then we noticed
some action at the pet shop. The sign was taken down. The windows
were soaped up. Men in overalls were installing drywall and
bribing the building inspector. Mulberry Street Joey Clams
wandered over and discovered that the pet food store was going to
be reborn as a restaurant.

"I left my card," he said. "I
told the gennelman with the cigar that I would give them a
tremendous discount if they chose to employ us regarding the neon
sign they will certainly require." Mulberry Street Joey
Clams was always giving his card to the gentlemen with the
cigars, but they never took advantage of his generous discounts.
I saw no reason to think this gentleman would be any different,
but to my amazement, the next afternoon we were interrupted in
the middle of "The Young and the Restless" by the
entrance of a cigar, to which was attached a gentleman.

"Theres no rush on this," he
said by way of introduction, "but Im thinking of a
large neon sign. Im thinking those curly letters such as
one sees on classy menus."

"Our specialty," said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams, which was a lie if he were referring to the curly
letters, but at least debatable if he were referring to menus. We
had quite a collection of them, in fact.

"This neon sign would be an outdoor sign
and perhaps the letters would go on one by one and then suddenly
shut off once the entire name was spelled out. Then, one by one,
the letters would blink on again."

"I love it," said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams. "Jeff here is the king of blinking
letters." As if in acknowledgment of this insane statement,
I blinked several times, rapidly. "And what would these
letters spell out?"

"The NAME of my restaurant... Joey
Clams Place."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams was now blinking.
"J-j-j," he said. "Uh. You know... I
dont..."

"Whats a matter?"

"The thing is... well. The MAIN thing is,
see, MY name happens to be Joey Clams."

"So you want, like, complimentary trips to
the salad bar or something, on account of your name is Joey
Clams?"

"N-no," said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams. "Im just wondering if... the thing is... how
many Joey Clamses can there be on ONE BLOCK of Mulberry Street,
you know what Im saying? I mean, if I made your sign,
wouldnt I be saying to the world, I am not the REAL
Joey Clams?"

"Well, ARE you?"

"Are I what?"

"The REAL Joey Clams. Because I gotta tell
you, I must know 10 guys named Joey Clams."

"I know a lotta Joey Clamses, too."
He began to tick them off on his fingers. "Theres that
rat bag Lafayette Street Joey Clams. Theres Joey Clams the
Midget, over on Delancy..."

"Wait a minute-- I know Delancy Street
Joey Clams, and he aint no midget..."

"Nah, nah-- Delancy Street Joey Clams is a
totally different guy, I know him too. Joey Clams the Midget just
LIVES on Delancy. Technically, hes not actually a midget,
though, hes one of those scrunched up guys..."

"A dwarf."

"Right."

"So why isnt he Joey Clams the
Dwarf?"

"Maybe there already was a Joey Clams the
Dwarf. Anyway, my POINT is, Im Mulberry Street Joey Clams,
and if MY NAME goes up on that restaurant--"

"So change your name."

"CHANGE my name??"

"What about... Joey Clamato. You know the
Clamato? Its like half clam, half tomato. Its BETTER
than a clam, and also better than a tomato. Thats SCIENCE.
Someday," said the gentleman with the cigar,
"theyll have a cure for rickets."

"I am not gonna be Joey Clamato. Why
dont you change YOUR name?"

"My name is Mitch Dinato."

"Then whos Joey Clams?!"

"You said YOU were, big shot. Me, Im
just using it for the name of the restaurant. If you dont
wanna do the sign, Im not gonna put a gun to your
head."

"Just TRY it," said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams.

Mr. Dinato did not try it, whatever
it was. He left, and in due time Joey Clams
Place opened, with a non-neon sign. Friends of Mulberry Street
Joey Clams would stop by the Custom Neon Sign Shop and tell him
that the seafood was excellent, especially the shrimp scampi.
"Whatever you do, dont lose that chef!" Every
compliment was like an ice pick in Mulberry Street Joey
Clams heart.

"If the pet food store was still
here," he sighed, "Wed be on Easy Street."

The Key Factor

Usually when I lose my keys it turns out that I
have left them dangling in the lock of my post office box.
Occasionally I drop them on the floor of my apartment and then
kick them under the bed. When Fate somehow contrives to separate
me from my keys in some other way, it is PANIC TIME, which means:
it becomes the Subject of This Weeks Column. So those of
you who were hoping for ruminations on the dueling Miss North
Carolinas, the 80 year old woman who went into the hospital for a
hip replacement operation and awoke the proud possessor of two
brand new Britney-sized breasts, or the South American man who
drilled 3 holes in his head to release the demons that had been
whispering "Drill a hole in your head!" will have to go
elsewhere. All youre going to find here is keys, keys,
keys. If you dont want to read about keys, this is NOT the
column for you. Non-key-type wacky stuff will be back next week.
See you then.

As for the rest of you: fasten your seat belts,
its time for a fabulous trip to the world of keys and
adventure!

But first I want to just mention these
alligator can openers. I have two of them, and they are some sort
of metal (painted gold) with red glass eyes and a large square
display thingee in the middle of their backs on which is
displayed a tropical vista and the word "Florida" [see
figure 1].
When you turn them over, you discover that the mouth
is actually a bottle opener and the tail a can opener [see figure
5]. A friend of mine runs an antique shop and I brought these to
her figuring she would jump at the chance to sell them and at
first she acted like I was trying to make a joke and then she
appeared to be horrified but while we were talking these two guys
walked in the store and one said "Oooh! Alligators! How
camp!" and she took the alligator can openers after all.
That was a couple of months ago and when I stopped by the store
to see if maybe they had sold for enough to take care of my
daughters college tuition next semester, she gave them BACK
TO ME and said that her partner, who NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN, said
she was too embarrassed to put them in the display case. She said
maybe it was because one of them was missing an eye [see figure
6, which I probably am not going to draw but looks like the top
part of figure 1 only one of the eyes is missing]. So I still
have both these can openers if anyone is interested. They are not
only really cool but they are fully functional as well, and will
be on display at the Delaware Valley News reception desk (for the
address, see part of paper that lists the address) for your
perusal. Best offer.

Because of my interesting work schedule, I
awoke around 2:30 on Thursday afternoon and I have no idea what I
did for the next several hours, although I know that whatever it
was it didnt involve my car because if it had I would have
realized my keys were missing (and I wouldnt have been able
to do it anyway). When I did realize my keys were missing, I
looked under the bed, and then I looked at the clock and saw that
the post office was now closed. It was not yet Panic Time, just
Minor Annoyance Time. My daughter has a spare set of car keys-- I
was sure she must have left them at home in Holland rather than
taken them to NYU with her. (I was also once sure that Betty
Sikora would never never tell anyone I threw up on her moms
petunia plants after drinking only one (1) glass of beer). The
apartment keys were not a big priority yet since I had no car and
couldnt wander very far from my apartment. At the local
Post Office, keys that have been left in the box lock are placed
in the box until the... left-ee? lefter? ...comes back to the
Post Office looking disheveled and insane, like Kevin McCarthy at
the beginning of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." But
he is NOT insane, the pods really ARE here (in the movie, I
mean), which is something the people at the post office might
want to keep in mind. So: with a phone call I could ascertain
that the spare car keys were sitting on the desk in my
daughters room ten minutes away in Holland Township; and no
doubt a stroll down to the post office in the morning would
restore my keys to my pocket.

Well, that would be a scintillating column,
wouldnt it? As it happened, the keys were not in my
daughters room at home, where they would have been useful
to both of us, but in her dorm at NYU; and my keys, I ascertained
by strolling down the block and looking in the door, were not in
my post office box. And when I showed up at school the day after
taking out the petunias, I was addressed by several wags as
"the two-fisted beer drinking maniac."

It turns out-- I had no idea of this, but my
ex-wife told me, and it turned out to be the fact-- you can get
replacement car keys from the car dealership by giving them the
vehicle identification number, so my mobility issues were quickly
solved. As for the rest of my keys, all of which I should have
copied long ago, I would scour the town diligently come the dawn.

The next day, I went to the post office and
asked if any keys had been turned in and NOT placed in the box.
They had not. No keys had been turned in anywhere in Milford.

Now I remembered rooting through my gym bag
early the day before, wadding up some gummed labels I had
abstracted from a loaf of bread to make a temporary repair on a
rip in said gym bag. Had I inadvertently tossed away my keys in
that wad of labels? I was certain I had. Something I forgot to
mention about the alligator bottle openers is theres a kind
of easy-grip texture not apparent in my drawings.
Once I notified everyone that I had probably thrown my keys in
the garbage and made arrangements for replacements, I returned to
the post office to mail some bills and the (possibly disgruntled)
post office employee on the other side of the counter tossed my
keys to me with a cheerful "Here ya go, bonehead." No
explaination about where the keys had turned up or why they
hadnt been in my box earlier was forthcoming.

Youre probably thinking Ive learned
a valuable lesson here about keeping duplicate keys on hand but
in reality I never learn anything. I have been trying to juggle
three balls in an overhand cascade for 5 years. No dice.

SQUID
BOYS IN NEW YORK

Mr. Price, the 7th grade science
teacher, informed us that the first class trip of the year would
be occurring in just two weeks-- the Museum of Natural History in
New York. Since we had been making class trips to the Museum of
Natural History (and, after lunch, the Hayden Planetarium) every
year, this announcement was met with glazed stares by most of my
classmates. But Calvano and Picarillo and I exchanged excited
glances. We hadnt been sure that the annual trip to the
Museum would continue once we were in junior high, and this had
concerned us, because during the summer we had become... The
Squid Boys.

Periodically we would decide that we were not
just three guys who hung out and grew acne together, we were A
Gang. Wed argue about what we should call ourselves, grow
some more acne, etc. This past summer we had discovered cans of
calimari in Picarillos grandmothers kitchen cabinet--
that is, squid. There were pictures of tentacles on the labels,
and inside there were... the tentacles themselves! From that
moment on, we were The Squid Boys. We had thought about getting
our moms to buy us black leather jackets and stitch squids on the
backs, but theyd demurred. So we made our own
colors-- white t-shirts with stills from the giant
squid movie "It Came from Beneath the Sea" on the
chests. I think iron-on transfer technology may have existed at
this time (1966 or 7) but it was still fairly primitive and
expensive, so the stills were literally stapled to our t-shirts.
And the stills were not exactly stills, they were photos clipped
from the cheaply printed pages of Famous Monster of Filmland
Magazine. If you were more than three or four inches away from
the t-shirt all you could see was a muddy blur of newsprint.
Above the terrifying newsprint blur we had written "The
Squid Boys" in magic marker. We tried to make the letters
look like tentacles but they probably didnt. Probably they
looked like letters with acne, which may be why we never wore our
shirts in public.

Even though we were not going to wear our
colors to the Museum, The Squid Boys were looking forward to the
trip because the Museum had a huge plaster giant squid hanging
from the ceiling, right down the hall from its arch-enemy, the
huge plaster sperm whale. The Squid Boys were planning to stand
in the middle of the hall and holler, "Go, Squid, Go!"
and say rude things about the huge plaster sperm whales
mother. Thus would we show solidarity with our totem animal.

We were also going to bring cans of calimari
with us. Maybe we would open them up and throw the tentacles into
the projector beams at the Planetarium and it would look like
earth was being attacked by giant squids. Or maybe not.

We put all three cans in one paper bag, and
Picarillo was designated the Official Squid Can Guy. We figured
that since he was the fattest, he would look the most natural
carrying two lunches. Then, when we all went outside and ate our
lunches in the park, each of us would look at a can of calimari
while we ate.

Our chaperones were going to be Mr. Price and
the new music teacher, Miss Gaita. It was already assumed there
was some sort of thing going on with those two. When
Mr. Price spoke to Miss Gaita in the hall, he appeared to be
enveloped in the same fog of desire that surrounded Picarillo
when he was ordering a Hot Texas Wiener at Duckys
Luncheonette. And one of the girls had seen their hands brush
each other when they passed in the hall one afternoon-- an
indiscretion so glaring the principal might as well have
concluded the morning announcements with "...The Chess Club
meeting scheduled for Tuesday after school is canceled. And
please avoid the supply closet during 4th period today
while Mr. Price and Miss Gaita consummate their charming but
illicit relationship..." In any event, we reasoned that they
would be so wrapped up in each other that the three of us could
sneak away and cheer on the squid without even getting in
trouble.

Following an exciting morning filled with
dinosaur skeletons, cross-sectioned geodes, and a remarkable
number of old ladies who smelled like cabbage and looked liked
theyd spent the night in a trash compactor, we spilled from
the Museum into the park to eat lunch. Calvano and I were
punching each other on the arms because our encouragement of the
squid had gone so well-- it had been witnessed by some of our
classmates and wed been chastised by a guard, but Mr. Price
and Miss Gaita had missed the whole episode. (Ahem). Which meant
it would not Go On Our Permanent Records and/or Follow Us for the
Rest of Our Lives, or even make it through the Lincoln Tunnel
with us. The Squid Boys had triumphed!

We looked around for Picarillo. He was near the
water fountain, and appeared to be talking to a bum-- or rather,
a bum was talking to him. Then he handed the bum one of his paper
bags. We raced over.

"Picarillo! Did you give away THE SQUID
CANS??"

"Huh? Nah--" He displayed the
remaining bag; the three tentacle-packed cylinders were visibly
straining against the brown paper. "Th guy said he
hadnt eaten in a week and I had two lunches so could he
have one. He said samwich. Lemme have a
samwich, Big Boy. He called me Big Boy."

"You gave him your whole lunch? Why
didnt you give him a can of SQUID?!"

"He didnt have a can opener,
probly."

"Neither do you, ya moron!"

Calvano and I ostentatiously ate our sandwiches
in front of our fellow Squid Boy. He looked miserable. "Ask
Mr. Price if hes got a can opener," said Calvano.

"Nah, hes a SCIENCE teacher,"
he said, as if the NJEA contract prohibited science teachers from
carrying can openers. Why Picarillo was focused on the idea of
obtaining a can opener is hard to understand, even at a distance
of 35 years, because he would not have eaten calimari even at gun
point.

"Do I hear my vocation being
invoked?" said Mr. Price, suddenly looming up behind us.
Miss Gaita giggled. "Good grief Picarillo," Mr. Price
said. "What have you got there? Calimari? And youre
going to eat it right out of the can? Unheated?"

"Hes a fiend for it," said
Calvano, "but he forgot his can opener."

"Eww," said Miss Gaita.
"Squid!"

"Actually, with these commercial brands,
its often cuttlefish," said Mr. Price.

"Well, theyre just little
squids," said Miss Gaita.

"No, no-- totally different genus..."

"Thats so interesting," she
said with narrowed eyes and a sweet smile which, I learned much
later, meant, "I hope you dont find the couch too
uncomfortable." The lovebirds wondered away, leaving
Picarillo as hungry as ever.

"Picarillo," said Calvano. "They
SAW the cans! Now we cant throw them into the projector
beams cuz theyll know its us!"

Picarillo could have replied, we
couldnt do it anyway because we dont have a can
opener, but hunger had shriveled too many of his brain
cells. We sat through the birth and death of the universe with
the useless cans of squid in our laps. At the end of the day we
returned the calimari to Picarillos grandmothers
kitchen, where their New York adventure must have made them the
envy of the other canned goods.

Mushroom
Clouds, Thirty Years After

Sunday my daughter Emma left for college and I
found myself overcome with emotion. I know some of you are
thinking (or dreading) that this is going to be one of those
heart warming father-daughter bonding type columns, but Im
afraid its not. Its a heart-warming
Im-finally-getting-my-car-back, father-Toyota bonding type
column.

So anyway.

It turned out that my daughter was not only
going to be living in the same NYU dormitory where I had spent my
own freshman and sophomore years, she was going to be on the same
floor. "What are the odds?" I said, marveling, and a
passing math major snapped "Five to one." I have never
had any use for math majors.

It had been 30 years since I moved in, and of
course there were substantial changes. For one thing, thanks to
Moby, for the first time in my life my haircut was in style. For
another, dorm check-in had become much more
user-friendly. On the door of each room there were nametags for
the incoming residents-- cardboard cutouts of the appropriate
state (or country), with the hometown marked. Milford was
correctly placed on the Delaware River, within 5 miles of its
actual location. I was impressed, but a little sad for my
daughter, who would not, after all, be able to speak in a cheesy
Russian accent and try to convince her floor mates her real name
was Ludmilla Torshovlosky.

Emma was assigned to room 503. I had been in
room 513 as a freshman and then moved next door into 515 when I
returned the following year. My roommate and I had pulled a lot
of strings to do this. We wanted 515 because someone had painted
an atomic mushroom cloud on the toilet seat cover there, while
the toilet in 513 was of no aesthetic interest at all. I was
unable to check and see if the atomic mushroom cloud in 515 had
remained undisturbed for 30 years, although I did note that the
two girls who inherited my toilet-- "Stephanie" and
"Rose"-- were, respectively, from Ohio and whichever
state it is thats shaped like a sort of squarish shark head
with a bunch of teeth missing from the lower jaw. Having
established to my satisfaction that those girls were not going to
let me look at their toilet, but uncertain as to whether they
were alerting security, I returned to my daughters room.
Emma was in the hall telling some kid in a "Ask Me If You
Need Help" t-shirt that "...mah passPORT says mah name
ees EMMA, but it ees really... Natasha." Here I noticed
another change wrought by 30 years of things happening while I
was not paying attention: students now bring a lot more things
that need to be plugged in. Id brought a record player
[long extinct], a clock radio, and a black and white TV. My
daughter brought a TV, a VCR [blissfully unaware that its
seconds away from being obsolete], a computer, a printer, and a
telephone. Id had a phone as well ("in my day," I
nearly wrote, but the stars began blinking out one by one before
I hit the d so I stopped) but it didnt belong
to me, the phone company leased it to me. Interestingly, despite
the 6 or 10 fold increase in the number of probably objects to be
plugged in, there didnt appear to be a 6 or 10 fold
increase in places in which to plug them. In point of fact, there
were no outlets visible at all.

I crawled around on the floor looking under
beds and behind dressers for an electrical outlet and thought I
had found one-- a red, pancake-sized circle about in inch thick,
stuck to the wall a couple of inches above the floor. I assumed--
dont ask me why, Id never seen anything like it
before-- that it was some sort of electrical outlet covering. I
yanked it off the wall and found that it was a roach motel. A
pretty spiffy one, I must admit, and the rates were affordable,
judging by lack of vacancies. A little masking tape, and I had it
back on the wall in a trice (= 17 minutes), by which time Emma
and her mom had discovered three standard electrical outlets, two
Internet connection thingees, two telephone jacks, and the Cable
TV port. These required a variety of cords, some of which we had
neglected to pack and some of which we might as well have
neglected to pack since the ones we brought turned out to be
exactly three inches too short. So there was a brief trip to the
Most Expensive Hardware Store in America (at least I think
thats what it said on the sign) to buy slightly longer
cords. The store was crammed with frantic incoming students and
their parents and I was relieved to see that many of them were
buying even more cords than we were. In short order everything
was plugged in, and after extracting from my daughter a promise
to pretend to be friends with Stephanie and Rose at least until
she found out about my atomic toilet seat, her mother and I took
our leave.

Sitting on the car seat was a small draw string
bag containing Emmas fish food, or rather, the food for
Emmas fish. "Ill just swing past the dorm and
you can leave it at the desk for her," I said. It turns out
that something else has changed-- the folks at the desk were not
enthusiastic about being handed a bag full of white powder by a
total stranger. But as soon as laboratory tests established that
the fish food was in fact fish food and I paid the extremely
reasonable fine, we were on our way once again.

My car, which I had seen only now and then
since Emmas high school graduation -- usually by chance, at
distant intersections-- felt unfamiliar. It needed a trip through
the car wash, too. And I cant help thinking a nice mushroom
cloud decal on the hood would spiff it up considerably.

PREDICTIONS
FROM THE LAST ICE AGE

Upon my desk is a big fat yellow book entitled
"The Peoples Almanac Presents THE BOOK OF
PREDICTIONS." I found this book while cleaning out my
parents' basement, saw it was published in 1980, and immediately
thought, "Wow! This weeks column writes itself!"
Writes itself is writer talk for this will be
much more fun to write than it is to read. But fortunately
for me, Im doing the writing.

This book contains 475 pages not counting
glossary and index and while there are some articles about
(cough) great predictors of the past and things like that, the
bulk of it is taken up with predictions-- mostly about events
scheduled between 1980 and 2030, but heavily weighted
to the near end, which means that most of them have already not
happened. Some of these events were predicted by psychics, but
many were predicted by various experts in various fields. And
virtually all of them are wrong, aside from a few extremely broad
generalizations along the lines of "conflict in the Middle
East will continue."

I know what youre thinking. "I
cant believe these damn ball players are talking about
going on strike. What planet do they live on? Two million is the
AVERAGE salary and theyre ready to walk??" But another
thing youre thinking is, "Nothing is easier than
making fun of old predictions that didnt come true. Any
jerk could flip through this book and come up with a facile,
snarky column full of cheap shots." And youre right,
but Im the jerk who did.

Well, lets get started. First, here are
some predictions about your favorite celebs:

BY THE YEAR 2000, RICHARD NIXON will have a
serious problem with his eyes. [Well, I guess a case could be
made for this one]. MARCELLO MASTROIANNI will use his charm and
renown to rescue hostages from their kidnapper. JOHNNNY CARSON
will become chairman of the board of NBC. HENRY KISSINGER will
become an important filmmaker. BOB DYLAN will write a book about
happiness in the year 1988. By 2000, hell be rescued from a
plane in a real life drama when it makes a forced landing due to
weather conditions. No one will be hurt, and a film will be made
about this. [The psychic doesnt say whos going to
make the film, but my moneys on Kissinger]. Also in the
1980s, FIDEL CASTRO will fall in love with BARBARA WALTERS
and move to Florida in order to be closer to her. This sounds
like a better movie than the forced landing where no one gets
hurt, although it kind of screams chick flick, and
maybe Kissinger is into action movies. If Kissinger were
directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of Dylan (or Castro--
hed be equally excellent in either role), and Henry and
Arnold both happened to close their eyes at the same time, would
they know which of them was talking?

Well anyway. Those were all predictions from
what the Book of Predictions calls leading psychics.
Also represented in bulk throughout the book are assorted experts
in assorted fields. The sub text of almost all these predictions
is more or less "by the year 1990, everyone in the world
will realize that I have been correct all along and they will
start to do what Ive been suggesting. Shortly after that,
most governments will make it mandatory." I guess its
more fun to write that than "The world will continue
ignoring my advice. My 1975 almost-best seller that got the
attention of the Book of Predictions in the first place is out of
print for keeps by 1982. If you are reading this prediction your
parents basement in 2002, I am probably back working at the
filling station..."

The geo-political predictions by real life
diplomats, military men, and politicians are almost without
exception intelligent, interesting, and dead wrong. About 70% of
these folks predicted a nuclear exchange between either the US
and the USSR, or the USSR and China by 2000. No one predicts the
end of the Soviet Union, tho Amory and Hunter Ivens think it will
suffer economic and political collapse in the 90s. Several
science fiction writers also make extensive political
predictions, some of which are eerily accurate-- Philip K. Dick
more or less predicts Chernobyl right down to the year [but loses
points for not knowing on which side of the iron curtain it will
occur]-- but most of which are even loopier than the psychics:
PKD also suggests that in 2000, an alien virus brought back by an
interplanetary ship will decimate the earth although it will
leave our colonies on Luna and Mars intact. This didnt
happen. OR MAYBE IT DID-- because in 2010, he continues, the USSR
(using Tachyons-- particles that move backwards in time) will
attempt to alter the past with scientific information. Im
not even sure what alter the past with scientific
information means, if anything, but if they did, possibly
one of the things they changed was that alien virus. Which might
also make a pretty decent movie, although the Castro/Barbara
Walters romance is still my pick to click, given the right
casting. But you know-- most science fiction movies about viruses
and stuff also need to have a romantic sub plot. Theres no
reason why it couldnt be the Castro/ Barbara thing,
especially with Arnold as Castro. Hes got the cigar thing
pretty much nailed already. Im thinking Renee Russo for
Barbara. I could see real on-screen chemistry between Arnold and
Renee. I predict it will be the biggest hit Arnold has had in
nearly a decade. He was going really good there for a while--
hed do a serious Arnold, then a funny Arnold. Serious, then
funny. Then the funny ones started getting crappy. Then, possibly
so the funny ones wouldnt seem so bad, he started making
the serious ones crappy, too. This was a huge tactical mistake in
my opinion. Its like when youre not too good looking
so you decide to get a ride to the party with somebody whos
really ugly thinking youll look good in comparison. But
people just think, "Wow, those two guys who came in a minute
ago are pretty ugly." So if youre thinking about
making the Castro / Barbara / Virus thing crappy, Arnold,
dont do it. Just do what Kissinger tells you and I predict
this will be the high point of your career.

DRESS
CODE

My parents were in Bamburgers, selecting
horrible clothes for my annual First Day of School. I was in
Bamburgers, pretending I wasnt with my parents. I was 11,
and it just seemed totally humiliating that my PARENTS were still
dragging me through department stores buying me clothes.
Bamburgers was filled with 11 year old boys, all trying to appear
that they were strolling around the Boys Clothing Department by
themselves and that it was just a bizarre coincidence that every
few minutes their mothers would call out "Ooh! A polka dot
shirt with a REAL BIG COLLAR! Try this on, sweetie."

Well, to tell the truth, many mothers were
simply selecting what we then called school clothes,
which back in the days of (loose) dress codes meant slacks and
shirts that buttoned down the front, either all the way or for a
few inches, like a polo shirt. This was the mid sixties and the
total melt down of taste and style ("The Seventies")
had not yet occurred, although there were harbingers everywhere.
In my closet, for example, and, at this moment, in my
mothers hands.

Most of my school clothes were perfectly
normal, but every so often my mother felt the need to unleash her
wild side, and the First Day of School shopping expedition was
inevitably the scene of an unleashing. Whatever was new, whatever
was Now, that was what I had to waddle off to school in, and
Im sorry to say I have the pictures to prove it. The Nehru
shirt I found myself crammed into one year was probably the ne
plus ultra of this, but it was hardly the only time I entered the
school yard dressed like I was on my way to frug with Judy Carne
and Richard Dawson on the Laugh-In set.

This year my mother was holding up a pair of
gruesome bellbottoms with, perhaps, flowers on them. As the
perhaps indicates, Im not entirely sure-- some
details have been mercifully blurred by time. Maybe it was
something even worse than flowers. I looked over at my father for
help, but he knew better than to get in my mothers way
during these frenzies and was pretending to be looking at belts.
Hmm, yes, this belt is very brown. Why, hmm, so is the back of
it...

There was simply no way out. If I were lucky, I
would come out of the changing room looking so grotesque that
even my mother would shudder. Then anything could happen. She
might pick out some bell-bottoms with even bigger flowers.
"Lets see what they have in the HUSKY section"
was another possibility-- I was on the, uh, husky side in those
years-- husky being a sixties euphemism for so
fat they push you through the Lincoln Tunnel to clean the chewing
gum off the walls. Many of the more horrible sixties
fashions were not even made in my size, at least for 11 year
olds. One now-forgotten fashion statement that did lurk in the
husky section: iridescent pants. These were actually dress pants,
which I wore not only on a First Day of School, but to church.
Attendance at the Little Falls Methodist Church dropped off
instantly and has still not recovered. I dont know quite
how to describe them. If the light caught them from one angle,
they appeared to be ugly gray pants, and if it caught them from
another, they appeared to be ugly green pants. Both the green and
the gray had ugly blue overtones or undertones and I dont
know WHAT the hell they were thinking when they designed them,
when they manufactured them, when they displayed them, when they
sold them. I only know what they thought when they wore them,
since as far as I know they is me. I am
the only person I know who wore them, though I once met a girl in
Cooperstown New York who claims to have seen a pair. She was
probably mistaken, unless she caught sight of me at the 1964-5
Worlds Fair, another venue graced by my iridescent pants. Maybe
they even made some sort of sense, trundling along between the
(ugly) GM Pavilion and the (pretty neat looking Bathysphere.

Incidentally, I was never beaten up for the
clothes I was wearing on the First Day of School. I dont
know if it was pity (probably not, since lord knows I was beaten
up enough otherwise), or if the bullies had just too many kids in
horrible clothes to choose from. I dont remember anyone
else showing up in shoe-horned into some Carnaby Street atrocity,
but my fashion sense was not so highly developed as it is now, so
who knows.

Once the clothes had been selected and I was
resigned to my fate, we went to a different store and bought
school supplies. Every year we bought (1) soft plastic pencil
cases with three ring binder holes. These went into the three
ring binder and were never seen again. (2) an assortment of
erasers. We used the ones on the ends of our pencils so these
were either craved into monster heads or eaten. Or carved into
monster heads and THEN eaten. (3) Book straps. These were rubber
straps for strapping up books. I never strapped up books. You
could use them as giant sling shots, but I never did. One of my
many eternal regrets. I could mostly get my way on school
supplies, my mother having shot her bolt on the ugly clothes.
Id be picking out some useless rubber artifact and my
mother would be already dreaming of next years First Day of
School shopping spree. Possibly she phoned the clothing designers
with ideas. "No, thats not ugly enough... think of
something more like a suit... only in pastels.... with big flaps
on the pockets... lots of pockets... we could call it... a
leisure suit..."

The more I think about it, the more certain I
am thats exactly how it must have happened.

* * *

Which One Give
You The Two Dollars?

WARNING: I must apologize in advance for the
article you are about to read. It presents your undersigned in a
rather unflattering light. At times, he will appear to be
downright rude, even belligerent. It is with great hesitation
that I make this account public, because I know that to many if
not most of my readers, I am an important positive role model. I
suppose it wouldnt be too much to say "a beloved
icon." Theres simply no way of knowing how many
parents throughout Hunterdon and Bucks Counties count on me for
uplift and moral instruction. "What would Jeff Grimshaw,
humor columnist for the Delaware Valley News, say if he could see
how youre behaving?" is something that countless area
mothers probably say to their unruly children each day. These
mothers should read this weeks column themselves before
letting their impressionable children read it. This is especially
true in those households where reading the weekly Grimshaw column
aloud just before or after dinner is a Thursday tradition. Older
children-- those in their mid to late teens, and perhaps very
mature younger children as well-- might be permitted to read the
column after a little discussion about how even the best and
wisest people have flaws. Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Speck,
Albert Schweitzer, me-- we all have our off days.

And now, this weeks column:

* * *

I had been selling owls all day and I was a
little frazzled. This was the second day of a four-day owl sale,
and things had been rather slow compared to the first day.
"Things will pick up again towards the end," the Owl
Expert explained. "Yesterday we got the owl dealers, on the
last day well get the bargain hunters. Today and
tomorrow... well, I dont want to cast any aspersions, a lot
of these people are good folks. Good owl folks. But a lot of them
are dilettantes, just kind of dickering for the sake of
dickering." I had noticed this. Near the end of the day, one
of the dickerers had dickered a large ceramic owl down from 82
dollars to 72 dollars. It took her nearly 55 minutes (not, I
hasten to add, all at once; there was a lot of wandering away and
wandering back between bouts of owl wrangling), and she seemed
well satisfied, although 10 dollars for nearly an hours
work didnt seem like that great a deal to me. Then she paid
with two-dollar bills.

"We just been down to Monticello,"
she said. She got points with me for pronouncing the name Italian
style, but I confess I was not thrilled about the 36 two dollar
bills. At the end of the day when we totaled up the proceeds and
split the take, my partner and I each took 18 of the Jeffersonian
bills and I thought nothing more about it until several hours
later when I put most of the money in a deposit envelope, dropped
it at an ATM machine, and went to get some dinner at a fast food
place.

I ordered 5 dollars worth of food, it duly
appeared on the tray in front of me, I handed the counterman the
money, and he said, "Hey, whatta ya trying to do here?"
He held up the three two dollar bills and waved them.

I confess that when Id decided to keep
ten dollars worth of twos, I had anticipated some by-play with
merchants and cashiers, along the lines of "Say! A
two-dollar bill! We dont get many of these." And then
I would tell my anecdote about the owl sale and the woman from
Monticello. I had kind of anticipated the merchant or cashier
would be a cute female who would be kind of tickled by the story
and perhaps even a regular reader of mine who couldnt
believe her luck ("I read your column every week! I
cant believe this! You look so much younger than your
picture!"). On this score, my anticipation turned out to be
incorrect. On various other scores as well.

Before I could explain what I was trying to do
there, the counterman said, "Cut the comedy and gimme five
dollars."

"Thats six dollars," I said.

"I see what it is!"

"Are you having trouble with the math? You
owe me a dollar."

"Awright, if youre gonna--" He
made a move to pull my tray back, so I grabbed a cheeseburger and
took a bite out of it. "Awright," he said, "I
wanna see some money now."

"Look in your left hand. The one over
there," I added helpfully.

"You either come up with some real money
or Im calling a cop."

"Go ahead and call a cop, you moron,"
I said. "I want to see the manager."

"I AM the manager."

"Its good to see your company hires
the handicapped."

"Jeanette, call the cops. Im warning
you, mister, you might think this is just a cheeseburger but
THIS--" he held up the two dollar bills again-- "Is
gonna get you in a LOT of trouble."

"Im going to sit over there and eat
my food and wait for the cops," I said. He didnt
interfere with my taking the tray to a near-by table.

"Dont try and leave," he said.

"I wont. I want a vanilla cone,
too." He made no move to get the vanilla cone. I ate my food
and shortly after I bused my tray, a policeman arrived.

"The guy is over there," said the
counterman. "He tried to pass counterfeit money."

"You told the dispatcher it was two dollar
bills."

"Thats right."

"Why the hell would anybody counterfeit
two dollar bills?"

"Ask HIM." I waved at the officer.
The officer said, "Lets see the bills." The
counterman handed them over. The policeman looked at them.
"These look good to me. Why do you think these are
counterfeit?"

Exasperated, the counterman said,
"Theyre TWO DOLLAR BILLS!"

"He wont give me my change," I
said.

"Give him his change," said the cop.
I can not here reproduce the countermans rejoinder for
reasons of both length and content, but eventually I got my
change.

"He called me a moron," said the
counterman. "Hes got no call."

The cop made no comment, but looked at me for
confirmation or denial. "Yes," I said, "But I
apologize. I thought he wasnt giving me change because he
couldnt do the math."

"Okay," said the cop. "Now
everybodys happy."

I wasnt really happy, because I
hadnt gotten my ice cream cone, but I was probably happier
than the counterman. I went home and went without ice cream. This
owl selling is a tough racket.

* * *

FOOD
FOR THOUGHT

12 years ago I wrote a column about my own
personally designed weight loss plan, which I called the ELF
diet. ELF was an acronym for Eat Less Food, and that was pretty
much the gist of my plan. To quote my favorite living author:
"...quite by chance, the Diet Expert Guy discovered that
when he eats less food, he loses weight, and when he eats more
food, he gains weight. This discovery is going to revolutionize
the Diet Industry."

Twelve years and approximately 624 columns
later, nothing I have written has produced anything like the
blizzard of abuse unleashed by that rather innocuous column. Some
of my disgruntled readers wrote more in sorrow than in anger,
some of them wrote in crayon because they werent allowed to
have sharp objects, but most of them just called me names. I
wasnt doing my periodic "from the mailbox"
columns at that point, but since most of the letters were
unprintable, it wouldnt have made much difference. I was
accused of nastiness, of stupidity, of not being funniness, of
insensitivity, of mean spiritedness, and (this was several
pictures ago) of ugliness. And I had HAIR then.

The one thing I was not accused of was being
wrong.

Although many of the "Ask the Expert
Guy" columns I write tend to concern subjects which I am
completely and happily ignorant of (see "Ask The How Come
You Shouldnt End Sentences or Clauses with a Preposition
Expert Guy"), I happened to have been a fat kid. I mention
this because many of the people who wrote to me were certain I
was whippet thin and had been blessed with a hummingbirds
metabolism. Alas, no. I really had done a lot of dieting, and I
really did discover that when I ate less, I weighed less, and
when I ate more, I weighed more. Is it really that simple? Yup.
Of course simple isnt the same thing as easy, but there you
go.

I bring this up because a lawsuit has been
brought against four fast food chains by a gentleman named Mr.
Barber, who suffers from obesity and a variety of obesity-related
problems. Hes 56 years old, has high blood pressure and
diabetes, has suffered two heart attacks, and says: "I trace
it all back to the high fat, grease and salt, all back to
McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King -- there was no fast
food I didn't eat, and I ate it more often than not because I was
single, it was quick and Im not a very good cook. It was a
necessity, and I think it was killing me, my doctor said it was
killing me, and I don't want to die."

The wire stories about this also quote his
lawyer, who hopes this suit will compel fast food restaurants to
offer healthier fare.

Actually fast food restaurants have been
offering salads for years and in some cases for decades, Burger
Kind has a veggie burger (and so does McDonalds near some
college campuses and other places where theyre likely to be
popular), and out in the non-fast food universe IT HAS NEVER BEEN
EASIER TO BUY AND EAT HEALTHY FOOD. Im sorry for yelling,
but some people are apparently under the impression that there
was a golden age when everybody in America ate lots of vegetables
and people were extremely healthy and only when the sinister
Golden Arches were erected on the corner of Main and Elm did
Americans start eating this evil fat-saturated glop.

In point of fact, Henry Adams
"America During the Administrations of Jefferson and
Madison" reports that a pretty hefty percentage of Americans
ate pork pie for pretty much every meal if they could manage it.
Ive never had pork pie myself, but I suspect it contains
pork, and probably lots of it. I grew up in a house-- in a
neighborhood-- where there was meat on the table every night, not
infrequently in the form of Jersey comfort foods like Taylor Ham.
People cooked with LARD.

"It was a necessity," says Mr.
Barber, but it wasnt. These days I can walk into the
supermarket and there are scores of tasty vegetarian meals, not
to mention endless variety of low-fat and / or low calorie
entrees. Even though fast food is cheap, home cooking is even
cheaper. Mr. Barber may be the worlds worst cook, but he
can probably boil water, which means he can make pasta and cook
frozen vegetables. And if hes got a microwave, he can make
almost anything. Im not claiming a microwave meal is the
most delicious thing on the planet, but then were talking
about an alternative to McDonalds, not Le Cirque. Mr.
Barber has always had plenty of options, and he has always had
access to the information that fast food isnt health food,
and that maybe it would be a good idea to get some exercise once
in a while. In filing this lawsuit Mr. Barber is proclaiming
himself to be at best astoundingly ignorant, at worst amazingly
stupid. Hey, no argument here.

Of course you dont get into the papers by
saying "I ate too much and exercised too little and now my
health is suffering for what I did and didnt do." The
amount of money at issue in this suit has not been disclosed, but
whatever it is, I guess it must be substantial if Mr. Barber is
willing to go through what remains of his life with what amounts
to a neon "Im With Stupid" arrow pointing in his
direction. But then a few years ago a guy got breast implants and
kept them for a full year in order to win a bet-- seven figures
if memory serves. We are supposed to evince a kind of grudging
admiration for people who abase and debase themselves if, in the
end, the pay off is big enough. Heres hoping youre
going for the jackpot, Mr. Barber.

* * *

QUINTING

For once things were busy at the Custom Neon
Sign Shop. It was not that we had any signs to make-- it was more
than six weeks since our most recent sign had been commissioned,
five weeks since it had been completed, four weeks since it had
been completed again with everything spelled correctly, three and
a half since it had been picked up and paid for, three since
payment had been stopped on the check because it sort of blew
apart when it was plugged in. So we were not busy making Custom
Neon Signs, but with removing the shop cat from Mulberry Street
Joey Clams face.

The shop cat had been Mulberry Street Joey
Clams idea. Hed seen cats sleeping in the windows of
various stores in Little Italy and Greenwich Village and thought
if we had one it might lure customers who would come to look at
the cat and then stay to order a tavern sign. Hed told his
friends and relatives he was looking for a cat, and in due course
one of his cousins had delivered a cat. We never found out what
the cats name was, or if it even had one; seconds after
being released from the burlap sack, the cat had disappeared into
the depths of the shop, emerging from time to time to eat our
lunches or to suddenly and without warning hurl itself, claws
out, at Mulberry Street Joey Clams face. So on this
particular afternoon Mulberry Street Joey Clams was screaming and
bleeding and I was trying to separate the cat from the face while
still leaving as much of the face as possible intact. I
wasnt very good at this despite much practice, but
eventually the cat got bored and disappeared once again, and we
cleaned up what was left of Mulberry Street Joey Clams
face, and decided to take the rest of the afternoon off at the
movies, where the early stages of healing could take place in the
dark.

I dont remember which movie wed
intended to see, but it was sold out so we opted for a French
movie next door. The actress in the poster was showing a lot of
cleavage and it looked promising, but about 8 seconds into the
movie Mulberry Street Joey Clams snarled "What the HELL.
Theres WORDS onna picture. And nobodys talkin
in ENGLISH."

"Well, its a French movie, Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, and--"

"Lemma EXPLAIN something here. If I wanted
to READ, which I do not, which is why I said lets SEE a
movie, I would have said, Lets go to the liberry and
rent a BOOK..." His monologue on the difference
between movies and books went on until the lead actress took off
her clothes, when it stopped, and started again when she put her
clothes back on. At some point two actors were exchanging quips
and the subtitle read "Here follow untranslatable French
puns," which I must admit was a bit much even for me.
Anyway, when the movie ended, or when the actress hadnt
taken her clothes off for at least twenty minutes, we left.

Mulberry Street Joey Clams Uncle Danny
was waiting for us back at the Custom Neon Sign Shop. Since he
was bankrolling the operation he had a key and was often waiting
for us back at the Custom Neon Sign Shop. The shop cat was
rubbing against his leg and purring, but when it caught sight of
Mulberry Street Joey Clams it went instantly into Attack Mode and
launched itself into the air. Mulberry Street Joey Clams screamed
and ducked, and the cat bounced off the fire extinguisher and
vanished behind some boxes to sharpen its claws and perhaps
dip them in poison.

"Gennelmen," said Uncle Danny.
"I have a commission for youse."

"Give it to him," said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, "I dont handle the spelling any
more. Besides, he likes to READ."

"Nah, this isnt a sign," said
Uncle Danny. He reached into his coat and removed a small bundle
of postcards. "Its a lot easier, actually, since
theres no spelling involved." He spread the post card
out on the table. "As you can see, all of these are
invitations to examine the * cough * facilities, or in some
cases, the accouterments, of many time-share condominiums, summer
homes, and so on, in the quint-state area."

"Quint state?" I said.

"From the Latin "Quint" meaning
five and the English "State" meaning places where you
can not be arrested and sent back to wherever it was you knocked
over the Seven-Eleven unless they got an extradition agreement,
or unless you violated a Federal statute. The five states
involved here are New York, New Jersey, New England, Connecticut,
and Long Island. You show up at these places, they take you on
the tour, and then they give you a free gift. If they think you
are a live one, meaning you are probably going to buy a share in
the Condo, they will give you a car. If they think you are a
non-live one, they will give you a refrigerator magnet or a piece
of rubber with bumps on it that you can use to open jars when the
lids have been screwed on too tight." He paused as the shop
cat suddenly shot out of an open cabinet and flew past Mulberry
Street Joey Clams head, deftly removing (or almost removing) a
dime sized portion of Mulberry Street Joey Clams ear.
"Stop yellin like that. What are you, a WOMAN? So.
Take these cards, they got directions on em, and tell them
youre whoever it says onna cards."

I looked at one of the cards. It was addressed
to Morton and Gertrude Finkleman. I said nothing.

"So. The way this works, Any cars or
microwaves, that goes to us..."

"Us?" I said.

"By US, I mean me. You can do what you
want with the rubber sheets things. But I wanna see them so I
know you actually went to all 18 of these places..."

I thumbed through the cards. "All of these
tours are scheduled for tomorrow and the day after."

"Well, I dont wanna tie you guys up
for the whole weekend. Id start in the most distant places
and work your way back, so at the end of the day you got less
driving to do."

We got up very early the next morning and drove
the Neon Custom Sign Shop van to Long Island. The man in charge
of handing out gifts at the condo did not believe we were the
Finklemans, but he was nice enough to give us the address of the
local Woolworths, where bought 18 pebbled rubber jar-lid
looseners. Uncle Danny was philosophical; he hadnt really
been counting on a new Mazda. "I knew it was at least a 25-1
shot," he said. Mulberry Street Joey Clams face healed
up nicely, and I have never had a problem with a stuck jar lid
since.

Getting
A Head with Ted

I have to think Ted Williams son
isnt doing him any favors by freezing the entire Ted. He
probably didnt select the just the head, please
option because he was afraid people would think he was cheap. He
shouldnt have been concerned, because people are far too
busy thinking hes crazy to worry about how cheap he is. The
fact is, Junior ignored all of my advice. "The HEAD!" I
yelled at the TV screen, "Not the body, you moron!" If
they do manage to defrost Ted-- the whole Ted, including the
opposable thumbs-- Junior is going to be kicking himself, since
Ted will be able to sign more Ted™ Williams™
memorabilia and drive the price down. Thats the trouble
with physical immortality-- it really screws up the market for
autographs, since supply can always keep up with demand.

But thats in the long term. Short term,
Junior missed a real opportunity by not freezing the head alone
and donating the leftovers to the Baseball Hall of Fame. First
off, there would have been a MEGA tax write-off, because who
knows what the non-head portion of Ted is worth? Second, if
were talking Ted Williams memorabilia, how could you top
Teds own BODY? MLB, which recently demonstrated an amazing
lack of shame with its never-to-be-forgotten All Star Game
That Never Finished But Only Stopped Dead (and it was DEDICATED
TO TED, appropriately enough), could either sell off Ted by the
pound (fortunately for them, the Splendid Splinter was pretty
unsplinter-like by his ninth decade among the unfrozen)... or,
they could offer him by the portion. There is, after all, a
restaurant in New York where you can dine on Zebra, Siberian
Tiger, and so on. So why not a little bistro tucked away in a
corner of Cooperstown where, for a SUBSTANTIAL price, you can,
since You Are What You Eat, become One With Ted? Or, in keeping
with MLBs ever increasing regard for the fans, Ted
appetizers could be provided gratis for corporate clients in
Luxury Boxes. "Yeah, they called the game after 11 innings
because otherwise it would have had to CONTINUE, but we had some
of those miniature hot dog hors doeuvres and they were made
out of Ted Williams-- and REAL SOURDOUGH BREAD!"

"You know," youre probably
thinking, "thats all well and good if they never
revive Teds head, but what if they did? What if they figure
out how to defrost him and he wakes up and says Geez,
wasnt there more of me than this? What happened to the
parts that I used to run with and throw with and so on?
Isnt he going to be miffed when he finds out it was served
with lima beans or auctioned off on eBay?" And the answer
is, yeah, probably, but then Ted got miffed pretty easily anyway.
I think hed be a tad more honked if he wakes up and
hes still attached to that 83-year-old carcass. Lets
face it, hes seen enough of that thing. More than enough.
In the year 2525 if man is still alive and theyve managed
to return Ted to 98.6 without turning his brain into potato
salad, they will certainly be able to bolt his head onto a new
body. Either an organic one, cloned from his own cells, or a
synthetic one, which will be able to perform incredible physical
feats even Ted in his prime was incapable of, but then it will
turn out to be an EVIL android body and Ted will have to struggle
to keep control of it and it will look like hes lost and
the evil android will be driving a truck right at a bunch of
school kids in a crossing, cackling evilly, but then TED will
gain control of the body for just a minute, crying
"NO!" and hell jerk the android arm and send the
trunk crashing into a wall, destroying the evil android body and
sacrificing himself to save the kids. So probably we want to go
for the clone option, although there is always the possibility of
an evil clone body, too. But science tells us this is much less
likely than the evil android body. Another possibility is that by
the time Ted is back among us, bodies per se will be totally
pass鮠Maybe everybody will be just a head by then, although as
I understand it, if this happens, the heads will be gigantic and
bald. Many of us are already halfway there. Anyway, at that point
in human development, baseball will be played by MENTAL POWERS--
we will use our mind to swing the bats and throw the balls and so
on, and we will have precognition so we will all know the outcome
of the game before it is played and therefore wont even
bother and everybody will just sort of loll around saying
"Theres nothing to do around here." In that
event, Teds appearance will be a big deal, since we (that
is, they, the big heads) will ask Ted what it was
like back when people had bodies and had no idea how a game was
going to turn out until it was over, or until the commissioner of
baseball called it on account of its getting pretty late
and the puffy shirt episode of "Seinfeld" is on in half
an hour.

Of course, the odds are that you and I will
never find out which of these possible futures for Ted will come
about. All we know for sure is that no one will ever be able to
write a biography of Ted Williams, the best pure hitter in the
history of baseball, without mentioning this grotesque (and
fortunately posthumous) coda.

Thanks so much, Junior.

ASK THE SOAP
ANIMALS EXPERT GUY

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE MANAGEMENT: We are
sorry to announce that the Soap Animals Expert Guy has called it
a day; after 17 years of tirelessly answering your questions
about carving animals out of bars of soap, he has decided to move
on to other, non-soap animal, things. He will be missed, and we
hope youll join us in wishing him the best of luck in his
future endeavors. But we are excited to introduce the new Soap
Animals Expert Guy, formerly the Sub-Particle Physics Expert Guy.
We are sure that his unique perspective on Soap Animals will
delight all the regular readers of this column and attract many
new ones.

* * *

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM YOUR NEW SOAP ANIMALS
EXPERT GUY:

In order to facilitate the transition to the
NEW, HAPPENING Soap Animals Expert Column, please compose all
questions Chico Marx style. Like-a DEES. That-a way, Im-a
know you payin attention to-a wotta Im-a talkin
here. And if appropriate, I will respond to the questions
Chico-style as well. I look forward to answering you queries and
bringing you the most up-to-date Soap Animals information
available. Thank you.

(signed)

The Soap Animals Expert Guy

* * *

DEAR SOAP ANIMALS EXPERT GUY:

When carving soap animals, such as Octopi, with
multiple appendages (especially thin appendages), it was
suggested in this column that the appendages be reinforced with
wire. I have two related questions: first of all, what sort of
wire should be used, and second, whats the best way to
insert it into the soap? My experiments along these lines have
inevitably resulted in the soap splintering or shattering and
Im tempted to simply leave well enough alone and leave my
soap animal appendages un-reinforced.

I thought your readers would like to know the
outcome of the Soap Animals Competition Finals in Doylestown this
past week. In the category of Most Ornate, the winner

EXCUSE-A ME FOR-A INNERUPTTING-A, but you no
write-a like Chico either. An-a you no askin-a no
question! Say, Boss, Dese-a Soap Animal people isnt-a
payin no attention! What-a we gonna do??

* * *

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE SOAP ANIMALS EXPERT
GUY:

Eet-a looks-a like-- Er, I mean, it appears
that we have gone as far with the Soap Animals Expert Guy Column
as possible, and its time for a change of direction. From
now on, this space will be devoted to...

ASK THE MEAT PANTS EXPERT GUY

Send in all your questions about pants made out
of meat to me and I will do my best to answer them. Hey,
heres one now!

DEAR MEAT PANTS EXPERT GUY:

Wow, what a great idea. This is much better
than that Soap Animals Column. I dont know what they were
thinking giving you a stupid column like that to write. They
really dont appreciate you. Especially the Chief Executive
Expert Guy but then he is three sheets to the wind half the time
anyway. Keep up the good work!

(signed)

A Fan

DEAR FAN:

Thanks for writing. Your support means a lot.

* * *

DEAR MEAT PANTS EXPERT GUY:

Lets have more letters about meat pants
themselves. What are they, anyway, and how did you become such an
expert on them?

(signed)

Another fan

DEAR ANOTHER:

Meat pants are pants made out of meat. In an
emergency where you had no access to food but were wearing meat
pants, you could eat the pants and keep yourself alive. Of course
it would not be necessary to eat the entire pair of pants. You
could just eat the leg parts until they were cut offs. That would
probably give you enough energy to survive until you could get to
a store. You also ask how I became an expert on them. Well, I
didnt actually become an expert on them, but then I
didnt become an expert on Soap Animals before I started
writing the Ask the Soap Animals Expert Guy column either. I just
came into work one day and was told the old Soap Animals Guy had
hit the bricks and I was taking over and I could kiss my
sub-particle physics column goodbye because there were more
people interested in soap animals than in sub-particle physics.
The Chief Executive Expert Guy (HIC! HIC!) explained the
economics of this decision eloquently. You bet.

* * *

DEAT MEAT PANTS EXPERT GUY:

All well and good, but I and many other people
happen to be vegetarians. Is there a vegetarian alternative to
meat pants?

(signed)

Yet a Third Fan

DEAR YET:

Yes indeed. Veggie Burger Pants are just what
the doctor ordered. These, of course, are made out of soybeans.
Many people who are not vegetarians buy them just for the
delicious taste, but they dont wear as well as real meat.

* * *

DEAR MEAT PANTS EXPERT GUY:

Do any celebrities wear meat pants? Or even
have their own lines of designed meat pants?

(signed)

Even a bigger fan than the other fans

DEAR EVEN:

Yes, many celebrities wear meat pants, notably
William Shatner ("Captain Kirk") and Martha Stewart
("Just Mention Her Name for Cheap Laugh"). Well, to be
perfectly honest, no celebrities wear meat pants at the moment,
largely because meat pants dont actually exist, although
Angelina Jolie has a veal-cutlet mini dress she wears to awards
shows. I just made the whole thing up to honk off the Chief
Executive (HIC!) Expert Guy. But I am informed that this brief
noble experiment in free speech has come to its conclusion
and the Soap Animals Expert Guy must return to duty unless he
wants his checks made out to Meat Pants Expert Guy, which he
doesnt. So be it.

DEAR SOAP ANIMALS EXPERT GUY:

Is it legitimate to carve a profile of an
animal from a soap bar, or does one really have to do the entire
animal, like a miniature sculpture?

(signed)

Tired wrist

DEAR TIRED:

Hey, you no write-a like-- Oh crap, Im
not allowed to do that anymore, either. Anyway, Tired, this
isnt Ancient Egypt. You want to do profiles, work in
another medium. Soap animals ARE miniature sculptures.

* * *

Well, thats-a all the time-a we have-a
this week. Joost got a memo sayin I would-a still be the
sub-particle physics-a expert-a guy eef-a I could-a show a
little-a reSPEC. Yeah Im-a show you some-a respect-a,
you fat-a stupid-a piece of-a

DUE TO TECNICAL PROBELMS THIS COLUMN HAS BEEN
DISCONTINUED. PLEASE STOP BY NEXT WEEK FOR OUR NEW ASK THE
VINTAGE RUNNING SHOE EXPERT GUY FEATURE.

From
the Mail Box

My indefatigable correspondents have been busy
these past few weeks. As usual, there have been helpful
suggestions ["...maybe you should stick your head in the
doorway and slam the door on it a couple times it would probly
(SIC) improve your writing..." -- from a fan in Pittstown],
useful criticisms ["...I hope you are not under the
impression you do not stink..." --words to live by from a
reader in Alexandria], and many, many suggestions about future
directions the column could take ["...Stop. Stop! Just
STOP..." --J. L., a long-time devotee of your humble
undersigned].

Mitch K. of Doylestown PA wrote in to request a
column about anocadas. He didnt say why he
wanted to read a column about them. I was game, but unfortunately
he also didnt say what they happened to be, and even my
unabridged dictionary was no help. I wrote back to Mr. K. asking
for more details-- and possibly a variant spelling-- but to date
I have received no reply. So for the moment Im going to
have to beg off. I say that with some trepidation, because in my
heart I know an anocada column could be a total killer with a
belly laugh in every sentence.

Melissa [who requests no further identification
in the paper] wrote in to ask why I dont run book reviews
in my column, or mention the books I happen to be reading. As a
matter of fact I do occasionally mention the books Im
reading, or have recently read, or maybe read quite a while ago,
or anyway heard about. Since these books all tend to have
floating eyeballs and /or giant insects on the cover, I try to
limit my references to them, lest my readers come to the (correct
but embarrassing) conclusion that my recreational reading is
limited to books with floating eyeballs and/or giant insects on
the cover.

Some readers-- well, okay, one reader-- wrote
in to ask for Calvano and Picarillo stories that take place after
their junior high school days. I wont categorically rule
such a thing out, but I must warn you that Picarillo in the
throes of puberty was not a pretty sight and this is, ostensibly,
a humor column, after all.

Charles Smith of Easton thinks I use too many
adverbs. He wonders if I get paid by the word. Well, yes I do,
and in fact for each adverb I use, I get an extra 20 bucks. I get
20 bucks for gerunds, and if I can work soir饦amp;#146; into
the column somehow, I walk home with a cool 50 bucks.

Noreen Ealer of Ferndale Pa, wrote regarding my
column about TV reunion shows, in which I mentioned my fondness
for chimps. On TV, that is. "It reminded me of a show back
in the sixties called Lancelot Link. The show was a simian
version of "Get Smart." And of course, every episode
featured Lance and friends playing a super groovy tune, a la The
Monkees (no pun intended). Anyway, that got me to thinking, why
couldnt old episodes of The Love Boat and Mary Tyler Moore
be reshot using chimps? Technically [an adverb! Ka-ching!!] these
would be new shows, not reruns or reunions. The entire cast of
The Love Boat could be played by chimps, except for Gopher, who
would be played by a gopher (he might need a hibernation clause
written into his contract). Perhaps Jack Jones could be persuaded
to rerecord the Love Boat theme in Chimpanese. Best of all, the
studios could use the same scripts, sets, and costumes,
eliminating the expense of writers, set designers, etc. If this
idea were to catch on, one day there might even be a Chimp
Channel (all chimps, all the time!)" We can only hope,
Noreen, we can only hope.

Someone in Tinicum sent a postcard, which
reads, in its entirety: "Say something about how expensive
weddings are." Your wish is my command. Weddings are very
expensive. And hey, how about that inflation? Prices just keep
going up and up.

Finally, there were several letters concerned
with the Ask the Expert Guy columns we run here from
time to time. One person-- I have the name and town, but will
*ahem* withhold them because Im a really nice guy-- wrote
to the Remaindered Three Stooges Calendar Expert Guy
with a question. The Remaindered Three Stooges Calendar Expert
Guy doesnt live here any more, Im afraid, but the
answer to your question is: The movie was "The Three Stooges
in Orbit," and the subtitles were in Martian. Its not
unprecedented for people to suggest ideas for the Expert Guy, but
only rarely do people go through the trouble of actually sending
me what amounts to half a column-- that is, sending me a dozen or
so questions on some inane topic which I then answer. The last
person to do so (and get into print) was Dave Pratt of somewhere
or other; more recently A. Kessler of somewhere else or other
sent me several pages of "Ask the Salad McShake Expert
Guy" and the only thing which has prevented me from running
it for your enjoyment is the little TM that has to be
inserted after Salad McShake like so: Salad
McShake™. My reluctance to publish the piece should not be
construed as a criticism of either A. Kesslers work, which
is excellent, or of the SMcS™ itself, of which ditto. But
my journalistic integrity requires me to refuse to print what
would amount to a 2000-word advertisement. Unless somebody forks
over a lot of bucks. I mean a lot of bucks by MY
standards. It would be chump change to the McDonalds corporation.
They would be getting their moneys worth and then some. And
let me tell you, when Im bought, I stay bought. You want
Picarillo and Calvano to get jobs at the take-out window at the
McBride Avenue McDs? Say the word. You wont be sorry.

NEW CHANGES
IN THE TAX CODE

There have been over 27 BILLION changes in the
federal tax codes for 2002 and you could lose enormous amounts of
money unless you hire someone to pretend to be you and confuse
the government while you hightail it to New Zealand. DO NOT LET
THEM WEAR YOUR SHOES, as this is extremely unsanitary, as Ray
Beamer in my 8th grade gym class discovered. But what
CAN you do to protect yourself, your money, your family while
still complying with the law? Unfortunately, nothing at all.

PART ONE

First, make note of these NEW
DEDUCTIONS:

STUPID NAME DEDUCTION

For FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS, there is a one-time
20% deduction if your first name has a z in it.
Examples: Zeke, Jabazz, Buzzy, Zippy, Ted, Zero. QUESTION: What
about a middle initial Z? ANSWER: Only if the middle
initial Z stands for your first name. If you think
your parents screwed up and put your first name in the middle on
your birth certificate, you may file a form 27xhhgfkfmlzzy79djd,
"Request to shift middle name to front on account a
thats where it was spoze to go inna first place."
Attach this to your Unreported Farm Income report,
Form Wfhjglkgjg767fjfj [See schedule 398958676768797898 for
instructions]. QUESTION: What if my name does not have a
Z in it? Can I still claim this deduction? ANSWER:
Yes.

CONVERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
DEDUCTION

For each time you use the self-serve soda
dispenser at a fast food restaurant and DO NOT take any ice,
deduct $7 from your total taxes owed (no more than 29,000 times).
There is no way we can check this, so please dont cheat.

PUMP SNEAKER LEAK DEDUCTION

Under an amendment to the Deferred Income
Defense Initiative Set-aside Preferral Act, you may deduct $250
for each leaky Air Jordan. You may also be eligible for the
That Is So 1989! deduction. ALTERNATIVELY, you may
want to itemize your sneaker repair supplies if the total works
out to more than $250.

BLECH DEDUCTION

If you have not filed a schedule D-5895 EZ
tflkg during the past 9 years and you have an old box of candy
lying around and all the candies inside are stuck together so the
box doesnt even rattle any more, you may be eligible for
this. You will need to keep the box for 7 years in case of an
audit. The auditor also says you will want to keep maybe a six
pack of Coors around too, and you could possibly send out for
some Chinese? Is there a good place in your neighborhood? CANDY
STUCK TOGETHER IN JARS is not eligible for this but if it looks
really cool you may want to say its an
installation and apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship.

TITLE IX DEDUCTION

All money spent on Girl Scout Cookies is
deductible, except for Thin Mints. The auditor wouldnt mind
capping off that Chinese take-out with a few Thin Mints, to tell
the truth. So youll want to have a quart of milk around,
too, to wash them down. 2% is fine, 1% is okay, but keep the skim
for people who really like drinking blue milk.

INTERRUPTUS DEDUCTION

The IRS has been using a budget printer in
order to save money recently and some instruction forms have
going out to tax prayers with important instructions ending in
mid sentence. If this happens to you, you should file for an
interruptus deduction. All you need to do is

LAVA LAMP DISAPPOINTMENT DEDUCTION

If you brought your lava lamp home and you
thought "now what the hell was I thinking??", file for
the LLDD (schedule qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm 2-B478576078-9).
You will get no money back for this but under the new tax code
you may be eligible to re-file under the Wetlands Preservations
Act if lava lamps are reclassified as medical supplies.

GAX DEDUCTION

This is a typographical error for something
having to do with floop. If you are eligible for
this, you may deduct 15% of the initial Gax fee so
long as it does not exceed the Floop allowance by more than $487.
See, but do not read, schedule 37B-yoobawoobafooba

PART TWO

AVOID SOME OF THE MOST COMMON
TAX PREPARATION ERRORS

Some people write down that they made a lot
more money than they actually did so the tax people will be
impressed and think you are a big shot. DONT DO THIS. It is
a little known fact that the money you pay in income taxes is
DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE AMOUNT YOU EARN. So you might want to
write down that you actually earned LESS than you did. Under the
new tax codes, this is legal, so long as you actually DID earn
less than you did.

While computing travel expenses, many people
forget to add time spent watching trailers at the movies,
including not just coming attractions but trivia questions and
adds for local business. This is in fact not permitted under the
IRS code but if the guy who is checking your form is about to go
to lunch or something he might just check it off and give you the
money anyway so go for it.

Taxpayers often forget to say "except
anchovies" when ordering a pizza with everything.

Depreciation on pencils is often neglected.
Pencils can last for decades, especially if they fall behind the
radiator.

Some guys answer personal ads from women who
describe themselves as voluptuous. Uh-uh. When you
see voluptuous, do not think Sophia Loren circa 1964.
Think Chris Farley circa 1993, in a dress.

Many people look under "IRS" in the
white pages instead of the blue pages. This is a big mistake
because the one in the white pages is the Independent Republic of
Swaboola. This is located in Kingwood and is actually this guy
Terry Swaboola, who is a total nut case. But his tax advice is
pretty solid.

FINAL INTERVIEW

My game plan for this weeks column had
been to conduct one of those inimitable (I almost typed
interminable) interviews with my daughter and run it
verbatim. Since this column will be making its way into print on
the penultimate day of her high school career, I thought it would
make an excellent an excellent graduation present-- certainly
superior to that 1981 Datsun that shes been drooling over.
And far more fuel efficient, too.

"Just think of a subject," I said.
"Something you and perhaps one or two friends can wax droll
over for ten minutes or so. Current events, favorite foods, boy
crazy friends... anything goes."

"Nah."

"No holds barred this time," I said.
"Anything the libel laws will allow. After all-- it will be
the last time you can appear in my column while youre still
a high school student."

"Nah."

There were several more questions, all
terminating in "nahs." I have to admit I wasnt
entirely surprised. Once upon a time my daughter was eager to be
interviewed for this column and so were most of her friends. But
the last time I tried to initiate one of these things-- which was
late March-- I was nahed into little pieces. Being
interviewed by her father was just one more thing my daughter had
outgrown, like The Babysitters Club books, eating nothing
but Doritos for an entire week, and The Spice Girls. (Although I
may be giving her a little too much credit vis-୶is the Spice
Girls, who managed to squandered their allotted 15 minutes of
fame in less than three). So I hung up the phone, reluctantly
abandoned this idea, and went out for an evening walk.

Im going to interrupt myself here for a
warning. You may be thinking that this is going to turn into one
of those heart warming columns where daddys little girl
comes through and does that one last incandescent interview for
the old man and blah blah blah. Well, in the immortal words of my
daughter, nah.

Often while Im out for my evening walk
inspiration strikes. Usually this inspiration is along the lines
of "Hey-- if I stick all those little slivers of soap in the
soap dish together, I can put off buying a new bar for ANOTHER
WEEK!!" But sometimes Ill be strolling along and a
classic "Ask the Broken Toe Nail Clipper Expert Guy"
column will take shape in my brain, to burst out of my skull
fully formed by the time I arrive home. Yes, its messy, but
I just fill in the gaping hole with a little wood putty and
Im as good as new.

This time the column was still at the
guess I better write something or other stage when I
got home, but when I opened the door, I found my daughter in the
living room, talking on the phone and watching TV.

"Hey. You decided to do an interview after
all?"

"No. It was an emergency," she said.
"I had to come here. Mom is watching some STUPID TV show. So
I had to come here, because the greatest movie EVER is on."

I turned to look at the screen. I did not
recognize the greatest movie ever. Which, I learned, was
something called "Atomic Twister." Emma was not just
watching "Atomic Twister," she was discussing it with
someone on the other end of the phone. Traditionally people who
tell you that this-or-that is the greatest movie ever (and these
people are always wrong unless theyre talking about
"Super Vixens," by the way) have at least seen the
movie in question. But as I learned from listening to Emmas
half of the phone conversation, neither she nor her friend had
seen this movie before, since this was its world premiere. Not
only that, but the movie had only been on for about 15 minutes.
While I think its generally true that you can tell whether
a movie is going to be great or terrible within ten or fifteen
minutes (just good or bad can take a while longer), I think 25
minutes minimum is required before you even start thinking
greatest movie ever made. Otherwise its like
watching the second inning of a ball game and announcing
"Wow! Both these guys are pitching no hitters!"

"Why dont we do an interview about
what you think about this movie?" I asked.

"Nah."

"Well, you and your friend, who ever it
may be, just seem to be talking about this movie and I could just
write down what you say. Except Ill have to guess a little
as far as your friend is concerned, since I cant hear what
shes saying. Not being on the phone myself."

"Nah."

Loving father that I am, I decided to do it
anyway. But here we are, 800 words into a 1000-word column, with
the bottom of the page hurtling towards you like a runaway
freight train. Something, you must be saying to yourself, went
horribly horribly wrong.

Maybe one horribly covers it. My daughter kept
saying the same thing: "This is so LAME. This is the
greatest movie EVER!" And then her friend on the phone would
say something-- possibly "Yes, it is very lame. Yes, it is
the greatest movie ever." Then a character in the movie
would say something or do something, and my daughter would say,
"This is so LAME..." Et, you know, cetera.

I was about to give up the whole thing and
start "Ask the Greatest Movie Ever Expert Guy" when a
commercial came on-- for what I have no idea-- with a sound track
of the late great Mel Torm頳inging "It Dont Mean a
Thing if It Aint Got That Swing." Emma, speaking into
phone: "Dont SING!" But her friend paid her no
mind. Emma handed me the phone and I heard someone-- I cant
identify the voice with 100% accuracy or rest assured it would be
here-- singing "...that swing-- doo wah doo wah doo wah doo
wah doo wah..." Many more doo wahs than were
strictly necessary, in fact. I handed the phone back to Emma, who
was now laughing uproariously and said, "I handed the phone
to my DAD while you were doing that!"

I could probably have heard the scream without
the phone.

It was a wonderful shared father-daughter
moment, possibly the last of my daughters high school
career and certainly the last one to appear in print while
shes still a student at Del Val. Happy Graduation, honey.

You wouldnt have liked that Datsun
anyway. Trust me.

Clean
Up Time

It was time to clean up my dads office.
We called it the office because thats where all the filing
cabinets were, but after he retired it was basically the room
where he taped hockey games. The office had a terrible TV set but
an excellent VCR. The good TV set was in the TV room. I could
never convince my father that he could toss the crummy TV set and
still tape his hockey games using just the VCR. "Where do
you think the picture comes from? The air?" That, of course,
was exactly where the picture came from, at least until he got a
cable hook-up, at which point it came from the cable. He taped
hockey games that happened to be on while he was out, or while he
was asleep, and brought the tapes into the TV room to watch on
the good TV. He also taped all the Giants Football playoff games
starting in 1981, although he was watching them live at the same
time (on the crummy TV) and never rewound them, let alone watched
them. At some point over the course of 20 years he must have
realized he would never watch them, but it made him feel good to
see all those games lined up on the book shelf, and he continued
to tape them right up to and including that debacle against the
Ravens. I couldnt bring myself to throw them out.

The first things I tossed were the phone bills
from the old house. I couldnt figure out why my parents had
brought ten and twelve year old phone bills when they moved. Did
they anticipate sitting in front of the fireplace one day and
nostalgically glancing at that bill from Sept. 1965? "Look
at all these calls to Margaret Schuller... and I hardly ever
speak to her now... Hmmm, 256-1135. We called it twice in one day
but I cant for the life of me remember who that is..."
Or maybe it was just in case one day the phone company showed up
at the door and said, "You never paid the June 1962 phone
bill and now with interest that comes to $25,000! Pay up at
once... unless you can produce the ORIGINAL PHONE BILL..."
My father happened to work for the phone company and I
couldnt help but think that if he was holding on to these
things for 40 years there must be a reason. But there were the
electric bills, too, and invoices from plumbers who ceased
plumbing right around the end of the Johnson administration. No,
he just kept everything that looked even vaguely official. So
into the wastebasket it all went.

No, thats a lie. Some of it went into the
wastebasket-- a mere fraction of a smidgen of an iota of all
these bills and statements. The rest of it went directly into
30-gallon garbage bags. Many, many 30-gallon garbage bags. Some
future anthropologist will read these words and curse me for
destroying this treasure trove of mid-late twentieth century
minutia, but you know what? Too bad.

Then I found the audio cassettes. They were
unlabelled or labeled so cryptically they might as well have been
unlabelled. One said "A.H." I put it into the tape
player and for a while all I could hear was a TV playing in the
background. Finally I realized it wasnt the background, it
was the whole point of the tape. It was an episode of
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" that my mother or my father
had decided to save for some reason. Before the days of VCRs,
that meant an audio cassette. The sound quality was so poor I
couldnt make out what was going on. I wonder how many
people did that? Are there basements and attics scattered all
over America with unlistenable reel-to-reel tapes and those
miserable first generation audio cassettes that jammed if you
blinked too violently, on which are hour after hour of "I
Love Lucy" and "The Twilight Zone" audio tracks?
Who in the late fifties imagined that some day youd be able
to buy this stuff at the supermarket for 5 bucks a pop-- probably
about 42 cents an episode in 1956 money? Certainly not me-- when
I was in high school I shot the shower scene in
"Psycho" right off the TV screen and unspooled it after
school one day for the Film Club, horizontal scan lines included,
with the volume controls of the TV hugging the bottom of the shot
all the way through. Nobody complained. It was a triumph of
technology. Honest.

And finally I found the tracing paper. It was a
large piece. Someone-- undoubtedly my mother-- had traced two or
three dozen cartoons onto it. I was flabbergasted. Why would
anyone take a cartoon book and TRACE the whole thing? I took a
closer look. These were Eggbert cartoons. I was even more
flabbergasted. My mother had traced every line of these things.
They were awful cartoons, although I remember my parents and
their grown-up friends liked them because they were
naughty. Each one showed a little kid in the womb--
sometimes two little kids-- making some sort of womb-related
wise-crack or off color remark. (First kid to second kid:
"Now remember-- first one out yells
surprise!") And as I looked from cartoon to
cartoon, I remembered that there was no Eggbert book, or at least
my parents didnt have it. Eggbert, who was far to risqu鍊for the cartoon syndicates in 1959, appeared on... cocktail
napkins.

And if my parents wanted to preserve his antics
for future generations, tracing was really the only way to go.
Copy machines existed, of course, but they were far from
ubiquitous and took a million years to run off a picture. 36
cocktail napkins would have taken someone the better part of the
morning to duplicate, and in all likelihood the machine would
have crashed under such a heavy demand. My mother probably
managed to trace the whole set of napkins in half an hour or so.
To preserve forever such hilarious gibes as (Eggbert cocking his
thumb outside the womb): "Get her-- now she wants a salami
sandwich!" and (Eggbert counting on his fingers): "Near
as I can figure... it all started right after Randolphs
cocktail party!" Maybe they thought without evidence no one
would believe the kind of licentious humor you could buy over the
counter in 1959. "It was too hot for reputable publishers to
touch, of course, but for a brief moment, things loosened up
enough so that the authorities winked at this kind of thing, as
long as it was printed on a napkin or an ashtray or
something..."

Maybe thats why they hung onto this
tracing paper for more than 40 years. As for why I havent
thrown it away, youre guess is as good as mine.

CAR
ON THE STAIRS

The night the car went down the stairs I was
wearing my new sweatshirt, which I had received a few days
earlier as a Christmas present. Every year I was given a
sweatshirt for Christmas, and every year it was a mouth-dropper.
My mother was a very resourceful and imaginative shopper. I liked
werewolf movies, so this year I got a sweatshirt with a wolf
baying at the moon on the front. You might be thinking
"Cool! A wolf baying at the moon!" but this wolf had a
little fuzzy pompom on his tail --and the shirt itself was
"shocking pink," just in case I still entertained
thoughts of wearing it in public. Even the 8-year-old girls on
the street would have beaten me up if Id appeared in that
thing.

But even though I couldnt wear it
outside, I didnt raise any objection to wearing it while
sitting in the living room, where I was helping my mother balance
the accounts in her Christmas Card Book. This was an enormous
ledger which listed every single human being my mother had ever
met, and whether or not (1) they had sent us a Christmas card and
(2) we had sent them one. I was reading off the return addresses
on envelopes and my mother was making the appropriate notations
in her book. "Barton," I read, "97 Third
Avenue." My mother flipped several hundred pages back to the
Bs. "Barton," she repeated, and then marked
it down: "1969-- sent AND received."

Now, in those days many people kept a list of
who sent a card this year since that would automatically earn the
sender a card in return next year. But glancing at the
Bs, I noticed entries for folks like the hapless
Bagdens, which read: "1959: sent YES / received YES. 1960:
sent YES / received NO. 1961: sent YES / received NO. 1962: sent
YES / received NO..." and so on.

"Mom," I said, "How many years
do they have to miss before you stop sending them Christmas
cards?"

"They can go to hell," she said.
"Theyll NEVER stop getting cards. I wouldnt give
them the satisfaction."

"But--"

"You look SO NICE in that sweat
shirt," she said, engaging in one of her hairpin changes of
the subject. "The other kids at school will be
jealous."

"Uh-- were not allowed to wear sweat
shirts at school," I said. This may have actually been true.
The school dress code probably saved me from countless
humiliations.

"Well, dont worry. You can wear it
on your next Boy Scout camping trip." Oh yeah. The other
guys in the Panther Patrol would be awestruck...

Before I could quite wrap my brain around this
proposed woodland fashion disaster, there was the sound of
squealing breaks, and a crash. We lived at the top of Third
Avenue, which terminated in a dead end. There was a large wooden
barricade, painted bright white, at the end, and on the other
side of that, the hill sloped down to a creek that emptied into
the Peckman River. To reach the creek, a set of rickety wooden
steps had been erected on the hillside long ago. I ran out the
door to the curb and saw the rear end of a car, taillights
blinking festively, sticking up at the top of the stairs.
"Wow!" I cried, and raced back into the house to get
the Polaroid. I was 12 or 13 and had visions of Assistant
Patrol Leader of Panther Patrol Wins Pulitzer Prize for
Photography dancing through my head.

"Whats going on out there?"
asked my father. "What was that noise?"

"The steps broke," I explained. I ran
back out, slipped around the barricade, worked my way downhill
using an overgrown path parallel to the ruined stairway. It was
bitterly cold, but there was no snow on the ground. The car was a
63 Ford. The headlights made a pool of light at the foot of
the steps. I crouched in this to take my picture, a head-on shot
that included not only the (barely damaged) grill but the
shattered railings of the stairs and a few steps below the
wheels. I hoped it would look like the car was still in motion
when Id snapped my picture. FLASH! I yanked out the film
and counted off the seconds before I could strip off the negative
and watch the snap shot develop.
"...six...seven...eight..." I panted, as I made my way
back up hill and trotted home. Now there were sirens approaching.
I was vaguely puzzled about why the car hadnt exploded in a
fireball, since that was what always happened in car accidents in
the movies.

"The stairs just BROKE?" my father
demanded. I showed him the picture. The image was just starting
to resolve itself. "A CAR went over the hill?! Was anybody
hurt?"

"Huh?" I said. "Uh..." It
hadnt occurred to me that there might be someone IN the
car. This was my first ever car accident, and I suppose I thought
drivers were optional.

"Well, he looks okay," said my
mother. "Just a little startled." The snap shot
revealed, seated at the wheel of the car, a very baffled looking
middle-aged man, eyes wide, staring right into my flash. The
sirens outside changed pitch as the police and the ambulance
arrived. We looked out the window.

There was a man standing in the road, talking
to the cops. It was the guy in the snap shot, still looking
baffled. "Its the DEAD GUY!" I cried. "I
mean, the guy in the car. Hes OUTTA the car! But hes
NOT GETTING THIS PICTURE!"

"It must be 10 degrees out," said my
mother. She told my sister to ask the two cops and the man from
my soon-to-be-classic photo to come in while they took his
statement. "Ill make some coffee," she said.

"And give them those crappy cookies your
sister sent us from Texas," said my father. Then, with great
presence of mind, he motioned me into the dining room and pulled
off my pink sweatshirt. I had completely forgotten I was wearing
it. "Put on something normal," he said sotto voce.

I was buttoning up a blue work shirt when the
guy from the car was saying, "Im not sure what it
was... it seems like it was AFTER the accident, but Im
all... mixed up, maybe... it was BRIGHT PINK. Just horrible. And
then there was a FLASH... these cookies taste really, uh,
funny..."

My father casually wandered into the dining
room where my pink sweatshirt was balled up on the floor, and
stuffed it into a bag. "The guys a little confused,
and of course Jeff had nothing to do with the accident--
probably"... he whispered, "but just to be on the safe
side, maybe we ought to hide this in the attic for a
while..." My mother nodded.

Apparently the gentleman had simply not
realized he was on a dead end street and reacted a bit slowly
when it finally dawned on him. The stairs were eventually
rebuilt. I did not win the Pulitzer for my photo. There was
nothing in the official police report about the hideous pink
vision the man saw in his headlights after the crash-- despite
which the sweatshirt was never seen by human eyes again. And the
Bagdens continued receiving Christmas cards from us until they
finally surrendered and moved away, leaving no forwarding
address.

a Loveboat on the Seas of Time

As my long-time readers know, I make very few
New Years Resolutions, but when I do make one, I stick to it.
Its easy. Because the fact is, I HATE asparagus.

This year, I also resolved to avoid all TV
reunion shows. Well, if they do a reunion for whatever that show
was where they said "Winky Dink needs a ladder to get out of
the hole!" and I stuck a piece of wax paper on the TV screen
and drew a ladder on the wax paper and then Winky Dink used my
ladder-- which never looked much like MY ladder-- to get out of
the hole, Ill watch that reunion.

Also, any show with chimps.

But I really have no desire to see what my
favorite TV characters look like 15 or 25 years after they
shuffled off into the ether. If I want to see receding hairlines,
sagging flesh, and enormous liver spots, Ill just look into
the side of my toaster. And if I want to see these things on old
TV stars, well, wasnt that the whole point of "The
Love Boat?"

I was thinking of "The Love Boat"
--if youll forgive me for using Love Boat and
think in the same sentence-- because I was surfing
around the dial recently, actively avoiding the Mary Tyler Moore
Show 87th Anniversary Reunion, and suddenly there it
was: The Love Boat.

I suppose I will never be able to do an
Ask the Love Boat Expert Guy column because Ive
never seen an entire episode [Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe
that DOESNT mean I will never be able to do an Ask
the Love Boat Expert Guy column...]. I sort of know the
concept, Ive seen little bits and pieces of it from time to
time, and its simply not to my taste-- No chimps, no wax
paper, etc. But this time I paused for a few moments because the
captain is Gavin whatshisname who played Murray on "Mary
Tyler Moore." As I watched the credits unspool, I had a
weird sense of dislocation. If youd asked me when I thought
"Love Boat" originally aired, I would have guessed very
late sixties, very early seventies. Yet it was Gavins POST
"Mary" show, which means it must have been late
seventies-early eighties-- as the TSOP-flavored theme song, the
brightly colored polyester leisure suits, and the endemic
sideburns all but proclaim. Yet even watching it for the few
moments I did, it still seemed like something that must have
predated MTM by a good half -decade. Of course the theme song
features the disco-stylings of Jack Jones, who must have last
graced the pop charts around 1962, but what really dates the show
is the genre-- they literally dont make shows like this
anymore.

Like what? Well, for one thing, big budget
prime time shows catering to a * cough * MATURE demographic. All
the receding hairlines, sagging flesh, and enormous liver spots
previously noted as residing in my toaster are present in
"The Love Boat" in abundance. I wouldnt be
surprised if a considerable number of mid-level movie stars from
the thirties and forties made their final public appearances on
"Love Boat." You would think there must be a sort of
ecological niche somewhere in the network TV schedule for a show
that has such a high where are they now component-- I
guess the last such show was "Murder She Wrote" -- but
maybe not. Maybe all the actual Where Are They Now and Backstory
programs on cable have taken care of that need. But surely
theres something to be said for a show that allows you to
see the favorites of your youth back in action one more time.

I realize this is an odd sort of complaint,
since Im more or less lobbying for a type of program I have
no interest in. If I start sending out letters that say:

Dear Major Networks: I noticed that there are
not many crummy shows featuring washed-up old actors and
actresses in the guest slots. I dont like those shows
anyway. Please add some to your schedule, and I wont watch
them. Your friend...

The major networks in question may feel
justified in ignoring my suggestions. "Sure, wed LOVE
to slap some crummy shows (featuring washed-up old actors and
actress in the guest slots) on our schedules," they would
probably write back. (Apparently they are saving money by
replying with a single joint letter). "We love those shows,
and our moms would start talking to us again. But we are
concerned about the part where you say you wont watch them.
What can we do to make these shows attractive to people like
YOU-- young, hip, vibrant consumers who wear really cool hats
[see photo]?"

You know, as much as I like to think Im
not susceptible to flattery, that reply just might do the trick.
So here goes--

"Dear Major Networks: Well, if you add
some chimps to the mix, I might click it on now and then out of
curiosity, but this isnt about ME. And many of the older
people this show is intended to reach are frightened of chimps.
No, sprinkle the chimps throughout your shows, but leave THIS one
relatively chimp free. A chimp every four or five episodes, just
roller skating through a boring exposition scene, would liven
things up for me and probably not upset your target viewers too
much. Nobody pays any attention to exposition anyway. But
basically, forget I exist. You guys think older people are
unimportant because your advertisers dont like them, but
your advertisers are missing a real bet here. I just straightened
up my dads TV room and I found SEVEN-- thats SEVEN--
remote controls crammed down in the seat cushions. Every time the
batteries wear out in one, he buys a new one. Every time the
cable company changes the channels around, he figures the remote
is broken and buys a new one. Every time he loses one under the
seat cushion, he buys a new one. And every time he buys a new one
and it turns out not to work because it isnt compatible
with his TV... he buys a new one. The amazing thing isnt
that hes got seven, its that he doesnt have 40
or 50. None the less, seven is pretty good. It means that when he
watches "Gilligans Island," hes got a
separate remote for each castaway.

So the solution to the problem is, sell your
commercial time to the people who make remotes. Their stock will
go through the roof. They will get into bidding wars to advertise
on your new crummy show, which I will not watch except when there
is a chimp on it. (You might want to superimpose a little banana
or something in the lower right hand corner during the chimp
shows, so I know to pause while Im channel surfing). And
remember-- no reunion shows. Not even if its got chimps on
it. I have a resolution to keep.

Year of the Crappy Panel, Day of
the Giant Frisbee

The spring I was 8 or 9, all the grown-ups
decided they didnt like their basements. Until then
basements were dark grungy places with cement or even bare dirt
floors. If the house was old enough-- and all the houses in my
neighborhood were-- there was often an obsolete coal chute fixed
to one of the casement windows. The furnace or the oil burner
dominated the place, and all sorts of pipes, wires, and ductwork
snaked across the ceiling and up and down the walls. There were
usually lots of boxes stored down there, but nothing valuable,
because all the basements were damp, and many of them flooded at
the first distant rumble of thunder. Some dads had workbenches
down there, but by and large they were places to be avoided. We
had a washing machine and later a drier in one corner of ours, so
my mother was down there a couple of times a week at least, but
my sister and I might go a month and a half without venturing
down there.

Then one spring it all changed. The entire
neighborhood and perhaps the nation was gripped by the desire to
finish the basement. This meant, among many other
things, lining the wall with ugly grooved paneling. The stuff was
hideous but it did hide the concrete walls. It was thin and cheap
and you could frame the basement with two by fours and then slap
up the paneling in a couple of days. My father used real nails
but I think staples or thumb tacks or possibly even Scotch tape
would have worked just as well.

Once the paneling was up and the oil burner had
been sealed off in its own little room, the grown-ups would have
parties in the basement. A lot of people installed bars down
there. Everybody would drink out of little plastic glasses and
talk about how great the paneling looked. It was a very strange
era. When youd had so much to drink out of the little
plastic glasses that you could no longer praise the paneling, you
would play darts. A lot of the throws were inaccurate and the
paneling, being so cheap and thin, quickly took on the texture of
a cheese grater for three or four feet around the dart board.
About two years later the madness passed and one morning everyone
woke up and realized how ugly the paneling was. People went back
to storing boxes in the basement and having their parties in the
living room. But the dart boards stayed in the basement.

For a while I occasionally went to my basement
and tossed darts at the board. It hung in the middle of the
pitted paneling until The Summer of the Frisbee.

I suppose Frisbees had been around for a long
time before they finally made their way to my neighborhood.
Certainly they seemed to be something new under the sun when we
first noticed them in the town park. Calvano and Picarillo and I
were on our way to the World War I tank memorial one sunny
afternoon with a stack of hot rod and monster magazines, which we
planned to read inside the tank. For about three hours there was
a shaft of sun pouring through one of the gun ports just big
enough to illuminate a page of "Famous Monsters of
Filmland" or "CARtoons" (featuring Wonder Wart
Hog). All literature was vastly enhanced by being consumed within
the tank, even though the lighting scheme (and the oven-like
heat, and the lack of ventilation) resulted in a pounding
headache within two paragraphs of prose (or five comic strip
panels).

Calvano was easing open the escape hatch when a
plastic disk shot past Picarillos head. All our heads
swiveled as we tracked its progress. The two teenagers tossing it
back and forth seemed to be having a great time. We were
fascinated by the way the thing seemed to curve around in the
air, like a boomerang in a movie (in real life, wed
discovered, boomerangs just wobbled in a straight line and
thunked into the grass, like non-boomerangs).

"What are those things? Where can we get
one?" asked Picarillo.

"Frisbees," said one of the
teenagers. "And YOU cant get one-- you have to go to
school in Cedar Grove." Cedar Grove was the next town over.
Although it was an absurdly stupid lie, we bought it totally. It
was so unfair, therefore probably true. We were horrified that
they could get these Frisbee things and we couldnt.

We retreated to the interior of the tank but
could not concentrate on either Wonder Wart Hog or the photo
spread on "Caltiki: Immortal Monster." "You think
we could call the cops and tell them theres some kids from
Cedar Grove playing in OUR PARK?" asked Picarillo.

"Well make out OWN...
friz-things," said Calvano. "In fact-- well make,
like, SUPER ONES." He hopped out into the blinding sunlight
and raced to my house. He removed the dart board from the
basement wall.

"See, those guys were just throwing the
thing back and forth. But well add the element of hitting
it with darts while its in motion..." We went out to
the street and practiced throwing the dartboard back and forth
like a Frisbee. It wasnt working too well. "Okay, I
think you guys got it down pat," Calvano said. "Next
throw, Im gonna hit it with a dart."

Within 2 minutes we had lost all the darts
without coming close to hitting the moving target. We found one
dart in the pachysandra, but were loath to throw it at the
sailing dartboard-cum-Frisbee. We tried rolling the dart board to
each other. This was very unsatisfying, but Calvano was able to
hit it. Unfortunately, we discovered that hitting a rolling dart
board with a dart is no different than hitting it with a rock--
it simply knocks it over.

A few days later we found we could purchase
Frisbees at the A & P. We were ecstatic that the ban had been
lifted. Calvano resumed his experiments with the dart. When he
found that a hit with a dart merely knocked the Frisbee down, he
ripped some foam rubber air conditioner insulation out of
Picarillos sisters room and stuffed it inside the rim
of the Frisbee. He had Picarillo hold the Frisbee at a bizarre
angle while he tried to toss a dart into the foam rubber.
Unfortunately, precision was not Calvanos forte, and
Picarillos scream still occasionally makes an appearance in
my dreams. That was the end of the Frisbee-dart
cross-fertilization. I sometimes wonder what the people who live
in my old house make of the thousands of holes in the basement
wall, and if Picarillos sister ever figured out why her
room never got any cooler, no matter how high up she turned her
air conditioner.

Ask the Finno-Ugric Language
Expert Guy

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

How do you say Can you direct me to a
moderately priced hotel in Finno-Ugric?

(signed)

Planning to visit Finno-Ugricland

Dear Planning:

I have some bad news for you. First of all,
there is no such place as Finno-Ugricland. Second--
although maybe this should have been first-- Finno-Ugric is a
family of related languages, not a single language. I suppose to
prevent confusion I might better be labelled the
Finno-Ugric Family of Langauges Expert Guy, but the
little sign on my desk is long enough as it is. [Note: This is a
joke. I do not actually have a sign on my desk. In fact I share a
cubicle with the Pomeranian Expert Guy and the Silent German
Expressionist Film Expert Guy, and we all use the same desk,
though we each have our own drawers.]

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Is Chinese a Finno-Ugric language?

(signed)

In the mood for General Tsos Chicken

DEAR IN:

No. Chinese is a sub-family of languages in the
vast Sino-Tibetian Language family. It has no relation to the
Finno-Ugric family.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

I find it ironic and a little amusing that you,
whose expertise concerns a vast system of languages, share a desk
with the Silent German Expressionist Film Expert Guy, whose
subject invoves an art form in which no words at all are spoken.

(signed)

Amused

DEAR AMUSED:

Yes, very ironic. Thanks for writing.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

What are the words to Besame Mucho?

(signed)

Not sure what the words to Besame
Mucho are

DEAR NOT:

I think it goes (more or less) "Besame--
besame mucho." Then theres a la-da-da, da-da-da,
da-da-da da-DA-dah-DAH part that seems to be in some
foreign language. Im really not that familiar with the
song-- sorry.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Why does William Shatner talk like that? I mean
the whole bizarre cadence thing he does. Instead of saying
"Would you mind passing me the basket of bread," he
goes "WOULD-- youmindpassingmethe... BASKET... of--
bread!" Does he think its funny, or did he have a
stroke. or what?

(signed)

Please make him stop

DEAR PLEASE

It may be a Canadian thing, although Ive
never heard any other Canadians do it. Well, except my friend
Leo, but he was making fun of William Shatner at the time.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Is Pig Latin a Finno-Ugric Language?

(signed)

Sure hope so

DEAR SURE:

No. Pig Latin is not a real language at all.
Its just a screwy form of English. Anks-they or-fay
iting-ray, oh-thay.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Are you good friends with the Pomeranian Expert
Guy? How old is he? Does he really look like the picture of him
that they printed with his column last month? He is really cute.
I wrote him a letter asking something about Pomerians but he
never answered it. Did he figure out I do not really have a
Pomeranian and just wanted to start talking to him? Does he hate
me? He is really cute so I hope not. Thank you

(signed)

Dierdre

DEAR DIERDRE:

The Pomeranian Expert Guy is in his late
forties or early fifties. We are not close friends but our
relations are cordial (which is more than I can say about my
relations with the Silent German Expressionist Film Expert Guy,
but thats neither here nor there). The picture that ran in
the April 1st issue was not the Pomeranian Expert Guy,
it was the actor Ethan Hawke. I actually look much more like
Ethan Hawke than the Pomeranian Expert Guy does. But they ran
Steve Busemis picture with my column in that issue. The
Pomeranian Expert Guy receives about 30 letters a day and can not
reply to them all in his column. He probably doesnt hate
you but he is married. So is the actor Ethan Hawke, incidentally.
Youre welcome.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Im going to go out on a limb here and
guess that the finno part of Finno-Ugric has something to do with
Finnish, but Im at a total loss about the Ugric part. Can
you help me out?

(signed)

Whats the story about Ugric?

DEAR WHATS

As you have surmised, Finno refers
to Finnish and several related languages, such as Lappish,
Estonian, and Mordvinian. These are distantly related to the
"Ugric" languages, the most well known of which is
Magyar or Hungarian. Ugric shouldnt be confused with
Ugriatic, an ancient Semetic language native to Syria, nor with
Urga, which is another name for Mongolia.

*

Dear Finno-Ugric Language Expert Guy:

Have you seen my car keys anywhere? I thought I
had them right here and now I cant find them. The key chain
has a rabbits foot on the end, if thats any help.

(signed)

Cant find the darn keys

DEAR CANT:

You should always have a spare set in the
house. In any case, I would check under the sofa cushions. Even
if the keys arent there, youll almost certainly find
some loose change.

Damon Knight, R.I.P.

There was a kid named David Enright who lived a
couple of blocks away from me. When I was 12 and he was 11, I
stole a book from him. I told him I just wanted to borrow it but
even when I was saying it I knew I was lying.

We had been in his room listening to an LP of
"Batman"-inspired instrumentals with titles like
"Batmobile Wheels" and there was a crappy looking
paperback on his bed, with a generic astronaut firing a generic
ray gun at a generic giant insect on the cover. It was called
"The Worlds of Science Fiction." I had idly picked it
up and opened it more or less at random and started reading. I
didnt flip to the beginning of a story, I just started
reading at the point where my eyes happened to land:

"...Cavanaugh was, by profession, a
comic-book artist. He was indifferent to the work itself;
it was automatic; it paid him well; but it had ruined him
as a draftsman. He couldnt draw, etch, or paint for
fun any more. So he had taken up photography--
specifically, tabletop photography. He built his models
out of clay and papier-mache and wire and beads and a
thousand other things; he painted or dyed them, composed
them, lighted them-- and then, with the Hasselblad and a
special, very expensive shallow-focus lens, he
photographed them. The results, after the first year, had
begun to be surprising..."

Thats just about 100 words on the nose,
and I think there is something that brought me up short every ten
words or so. Id never read a story about a comic book
artist before. Cool. And he was indifferent to it?? Huh?
Table-top what? And what, for that matter, was this story doing
in a book with giant insects and ray guns on the cover? I read
the next two paragraphs, which described one of the tableaus
Cavanaugh was photographing, and then turned back to the
beginning, and after about 5 pages I asked David if I could
borrow the book and he hasnt seen it since. About a year
later I gave him a box full of old comic books, ostensibly
because I had outgrown them. Some of them are worth 50 and 60
bucks now if he held on to them, so I dont feel
particularly guilty about the book.

The story that triggered my maiden voyage into
larceny [a few months later I left summer camp with another
purloined anthology, "Monster Mix," but the kid who
actually owned it had left it behind when he went home a week
early so it was either stick it in my knapsack or leave it for
the squirrels] was "Babel II" by Damon Knight, and he
died last week at the age of 79.

His death made the wire services because when
he was a very young man he wrote a story called "To Serve
Man," which served as the basis for one of the most
memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone, as well as a
great parody on "The Simpsons." It also inspired the
only cartoon I ever managed to place in a science fiction zine --
a not-very-good drawing of a woman racing up to a man boarding a
space ship and yelling, Dont get on that ship,
professor! To Serve Man is a TENNIS BOOK!

Well, I guess you had to be there.

"To Serve Man" got him onto the AP
wire and makes him a Possible Future Jeopardy Answer [P.F.J.A.,
pronounced PUFF-Jah!"] but it was written very early
in a career than eventually produced close to 20 novels and
another hundred or so stories and in my humble opinion it
doesnt even crack the Damon Knight top twenty. He actually
got better and better, almost to the very end.

But its possible that his most valuable
contribution to American culture isnt a story at all. He
was also feisty book reviewer ("This eloquent
novel, says the jacket of Taylor Caldwells The
Devils Advocate, making two errors in three
words...") and, with his friend and colleague James Blish,
popularized the term idiot plot.

This is defined as "a plot which is kept
in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is
an idiot." I remember any number of evenings sitting before
the TV set and asking my parents why a character in some TV show
or movie was or wasnt doing something. The conversations
always went more or less like this: ME: "Why dont they
just call the police?" DAD: "Because then the movie
would be over." I always found this a less-than adequate
explaination. (My sister, on the other hand, would simply scream
"Make him stop!! Hes RUINING THE MOVIE!!"
whenever I asked a question). My dad and my sister both appeared
to believe that because the movie would be over was a
perfectly legitimate motivation for otherwise inexplicable
character behavior. I dimly sensed it made sense only if the
character in question knew he was in a movie, which kind of
spoiled the whole thing for me. Once I had digested the concept
of the idiot plot, I felt much better. I understood the problem
wasnt ME.

I still have David Enrights copy of
"Worlds of Science Fiction." When I walked out of his
house with it crammed into my back pocket, all of the 16 writers
represented in it were alive and well and still producing. A
couple of weeks ago there were only 3 left, and now there are 2,
and I guess thats pretty solid evidence that, no matter
what anybody says, Im not 12 years old any more.

KLINGON
TAUTOLOGIES

"Like, why is your dad
laughing at that?" said my daughters friend.

My daughter didnt answer,
just stared at me. It might have been a stare of annoyance or it
might have been disgust. It was hard to say because she was
upside down. Or rather I was upside down, but from my point of
view her eyes were on the bottom and her mouth was on the top and
the subtle nuances were hard to determine. I had a pair of ropes
hanging from the transom between my living room and the front
hall, and I hang from them for about 10 minutes a day because
its supposed to help me get the arm extension I need to do
Gomukhasana in my yoga class. Im not quite sure why I want
to do Gomukhasana. I dont even know what it is. My yoga
teacher is probably pulling a fast one on me and there is no such
thing. Its probably the name of the Klingon ambassador or
something.

"That woman had like
CANCER," said my daughters friend. I nodded, but even
upside down I couldnt entirely suppress my chortling.

The woman in question was on a TV
commercial which youve probably seen dozens if not hundreds
of times, though even now Im not sure exactly what
its a commercial for-- possibly a pharmaceutical company.
The woman, either a cancer survivor or an actress playing a
cancer survivor, is talking about advances made in research and
development over the past decade and says:

"If this were ten years ago,
I wouldnt be sitting here today."

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you
need a heart of stone to hear than sentence and not laugh. My
daughter and her friend didnt see it that way.

"Im not laughing
because she was sick and got better," I said. "Im
laughing because what she said is so..."

I paused as if trying to come up
with le mot juste. In point of fact le mot juste--
"stupid" -- had been on the tip of my tongue and
Id had to snap it off. Le mot, not le tongue.

"...so, uh,
tautological," I concluded lamely. "A tautology
is--"

"We KNOW what a tautology
is," said my daughter.

"A needless repetition in
different words of the same idea in the same sentence," said
her friend, for the benefit of anyone who happened to be hiding
behind the couch or under the kitchen counter and didnt
know what a tautology was.

"Yeah. Thats what
Im laughing at," I said, and went back to laughing. Or
rather chortling, since Ive seen the commercial about 5
times a day for the past 6 months and dont find it quite as
hilarious as I did the first few times. Though of course
its still pretty hilarious.

"Well, in the first place
[this is my daughter talking], theres nothing funny about
tautologies. Theyre just redundant. And in the second
place, she didnt say anything tautological."

"Yes she did."

"She said if shed
gotten sick ten year ago they wouldnt have been able to
cure her and shed have died. Whats redundant?
Wheres the joke?"

"She didnt say that.
She said If this were ten years ago, I wouldnt be
sitting here today."

"She MEANT--"

"I know what she meant to
say. I also know she didnt say it. What she did say was, if
it was ten years ago, it wouldnt be today. To which the
only possible reply is, as you folks say: DUH. What she SAID is
no different than if shed said, If I were in
Milwaukee, I wouldnt be standing on top of my car in a
parking lot in Budapest. Or, if I..."

"You know what?"

"What?"

"Youre NOT standing on
top of your car in a parking lot in Budapest."

"The point--"

"So your whole argument
totally falls apart."

"No it doesnt."

"I always get Budapest and
Bucharest mixed up."

"Let me relocate my car,
then, to make the analogy a little clearer. Its like saying
If I were in Milwaukee, I wouldnt be sitting here
right now. Okay?"

"You left the car out."

"I know. Im trying to
streamline things. The point, to the extent that I have one, is
that Im doing in SPACE with MY sentence what shes
doing with TIME in hers. Okay?"

"I liked it better when your
dad was on top of the car. Is Budapest the one in Romania or
Hungary?"

"Budapest is Hungary, and
Bucharest is Romania."

"Do you think
Budapest is Hungarian for whatever it is that
Bucharest means in Romanian?"

"You know... I think it MUST
be. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. Maybe
its a guys name. Some guy who like Lafayette, you
know, whos got a city in Indiana named after him as well as
a pastry shop in Hackensack."

"Is it a French pastry shop?
I guess it must be."

"We didnt go in, we
just drove by, but Im sure."

They never quite returned to the
subject of the woman in the commercial and her brilliant
observation that if it were 10 years ago, it wouldnt be
today. I lowered myself from my ropes and did whatever it is that
I do when Im not upside down while my daughter and her
friend speculated about the identity of this impressive personage
who had two European capitals named after him, as well as who
knows how many pastry shops. Shortly after that they left,
although I suspect before they did I must have wandered out of
the room for a moment or two.

The reason I suspect this is that
the next day I pulled myself into that upside-down position and
one of the ropes snapped. No, dont worry, Im fine. I
was unconscious for less than an hour, probably. At first I
chalked it up to rope fatigue but when I examined the parting, it
appeared to me that the rope had been cut about 90% of the way
through.

I have a pretty idea of just who
did it, and I dont think it was Ambassador Gomukhasana. It
may not have been a Klingon at all. I dont want to make any
accusations in print. All I can say is, if this were ten years
ago, I wouldnt have landed on my head this morning.

She wouldnt have been able
to reach the rope.

KOMODO
BILLY BOB

Many readers have expressed an interest in knowing just how I
go about writing these columns week after week. Of course when I
say "many readers," what I mean is that my daughter
agreed to do one of those interviews where she and a friend call
me up and I write down everything they say, and then she crapped
out on me so now I'm facing deadline without an idea in my head
and about 45 minutes to do something about it.

"I had a fight with the girl who was going to do the
interview," my daughter explained.

"So call ANOTHER friend."

"None of my other friends will do it. They say you change
what they say and make them sound dopey."

"That's ridiculous. So just find one who doesn't know I
do that."

"Everybody knows you do it."

"Well, then solo. I'll just interview you."

"Talk to the hand, the ears aren't listening," she
said. I talked to the hand for a while but I didn't get any
further with the hand than I did with the ears, so here I am.

I quickly reviewed my day's reading to see if there was
something in the papers or on the wire that I could work into a
column. This is one of the answers to the oft-asked question
'where do you get your ideas?' In general, I steal them, and the
newspapers are one of the places I steal them from when I don't
have the energy to dig out my old Robert Benchley books and
retype one of his articles, sprinkling words like "New
Jersey" and "Picarillo" in at random so no one
will suspect a thing.

I found two promising stories in the papers: a Billy Bob
Thornton interview from the London Daily Telegraph, and a
cat-bites-dog story from the Wall Street Journal. The cat story
was interesting because the owner of the dog was suing the cat
for committing a 'hate crime,' but the Journal's slant on the
story-- that it was really stupid-- pretty much pre-emptied
anything I was likely to come up with.

Billy Bob was waxing elequent on the subject of his dislike
for komodo dragons. Quoth he: "More than anything on this
earth, more than any being that exists, they are the creature
that represents evil... if it were up to me, I'd just go to that
island and kill them all. I would just shoot those sons of
bitches."

When I read those words, Iimmediately called UPS and pleaded,
"DON'T DELIVER THAT KOMODO DRAGON to Billy Bob after
all!"

Well, actually I thought, wow. I've never heard of anybody who
had issues with Komodo dragons before. And I have to admit that
in this age of politically correct tree-hugging PETA-joining
celebrity goo-goos, it was pretty bracing to encounter somebody
who not only didn't love a (sort of) endangered species but
wanted to speed it on its way to oblivion.

I considered doing a 'Komodo Dragon Expert Guy' thing, where
Billy Bob sent in all the letters. So I did a fast web search on
both "Billy Bob" and "Dragons." And also one
on "Billy Bob AND Dragons," in case there he'd gone on
a toot about this before. To my amazement, "Billy Bob AND
Dragons" got more than 350 hits. But it turned out the
dragons in question were not of the komodo variety-- most of the
hits were from a 'Dungeons and Dragons' movie Billy Bob had been
involved with. And several mentioned that Billy Bob's wife
Angelina Jolie had dragon tattoos somewhere or other. I have to
guess that she got them BEFORE she married Billy Bob, although
it's possible that one of Billy Bob's 12 or 13 ex-wives sand
bagged her with something like "...we'd still be married
today if I'd gotten those Komodo dragon tattoos like he
wanted..." Either way, though, given Billy Bob's dragon
problem, you have to think the tattoos would be a deal breaker.
He must be a patient and loving husband, no quesiton about it.

Non-Billy Bob-related Komodo Dragon websites are legion and
full of fascinating Komodo Dragonfactoids that would have been a
boon to the writing of an "Ask The Komodo Dragon Expert
Guy" column, had I chosen to write that, instead of this. It
turns out that the komodo dragon is not really a DRAGON-dragon,
with the little bat wings and smoke coming out of the nostrils.
But it's pretty close-- a 10-foot long meat-eating lizard from
Bali. And it's been around since the Jurassic Period. The komodo
dragon (real name: Varanus Komodoensis, in the monitor family,
Varanidae) is basically the Strom Thurmond of the lizard world.
Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't say they haven't had a great run.

But nary a hint about why Billy Bob can't abide them. The
Telegraph notes that he once woke his wife and insisted on
spending the rest of the night in a hotel because he'd dreamed
the house was infested with Komodo Dragons, but Billy Bob's dream
seems to have been the fruit of his dragonophobia rather than the
cause of it.

Ultimately, my own failure to imagine a reason why Billy Bob
flips out over Komodo Dragons is why you're reading this column
rather than one that begin:

DEAR KOMODO DRAGON EXPERT GUY:

What is the name of that island where the komodo dragons live?
And do they have any gun shops there?

(signed)

Billy Bob Thornton

As soon as I typed that out, I had a wave of deja vu-- had I
done a komodo dragon expert guy column before? (Or, even worse, a
BILLY BOB THORNTON-KOMODO DRAGON EXPERT GUY column?). Then I
realized that there was a

classic Bob and Ray routine about a Komodo Dragon Expert,
which goes more or less:

R: Today we have with us the world famous expert on komodo
dragons. Tell me, what is a komodo dragon?

B: A komodo dragon is a large lizard of the species Varanus
Komodoensis, indigenous to Indonesian islands east of Java.

R: And where do they live?

B: The komodo dragons live on Indonesian islands east of Java
where they grow to a length of ten feet.

R: Do they get very big?

B: Yes, they grow to a length of ten feet and they eat mostly
small rodents.

R: Ten feet? Wow! And what do they eat?

So the Komodo Dragon Expert Guy bit was definitely a
non-starter.

All in all, I would rather have done the interview I'd been
planning. The subject was going to be 'Spring Break.' So you
probably lucked out after all.

Discourse on Glop

My parents watched me warily as I dug the
chocolate Easter bunny out of the basket. It was huge. I
suppressed a look of disappointment as I hefted the bunny in my
right hand and judged it to be hollow. It was still a substantial
chunk of chocolate. "Now dont go crazy," said my
father.

That hurt. Crazy? Me? Just because last year I
had wolfed down my chocolate Easter bunny-- a SOLID one, thank
you very much-- before the afterimage of the thing had faded from
my retinas. "Just a small piece now," I said, "so
I dont spoil my appetite for lunch." I broke off a
fragment of the left ear and gnawed it thoughtfully.
"Excellent chocolate," I said. "Now Ill just
stick this up in my room for later..."

"Dont eat the whole thing at
once..."

"No, no. Ill make it last all
through Easter break..."

Needless to say, most of the bunny was gone
before I was halfway up the stairs (though to be fair, I was
walking very slowly). The rest was began a whirlwind tour of my
digestive tract just as my rear end sank into the beanbag chair
under the Nancy Sinatra poster.

Later that afternoon I met with Picarillo and
Calvano in the park. The town had padlocked the World War I Tank
Memorial which served as our headquarters during the temperate
months and we were forced to hold our meetings on the turret, at
least until some enterprising teenager employed the bolt cutters
and we could get inside once more. We were all sick. Gloriously
sick. We estimated that we had eaten approximately 5 pounds of
chocolate apiece. I suspect now that the estimate was off, though
Im not prepared to say in which direction.

"My mom gave me another bunny, too,"
Picarillo said. "I had to give it to Noreen. It was WHITE
CHOCOLATE."

Calvano and I shuddered. White chocolate was an
abomination. But girls liked it for some reason, despite the fact
[and it IS a fact] that it tasted like cardboard.

"Ive noticed a definite uptick in
white chocolate this year," Calvano said. "Although I
have to admit that the bulk to the white chocolate bunnies were
solid."

"But small?" said Picarillo. "At
my house the white chocolate bunnies were about two thirds the
size of the regular chocolate ones."

"Definitely smaller." But this, we
decided, was probably a function of their being solid, rather
than their being white chocolate.

"You know what the best thing about Easter
chocolate-- I mean chocolate-type chocolate, not white
chocolate-- is?" asked Calvano. We shook our heads. And
instantly regretted it, since the chocolate-induced nausea was
aggravated by head shaking. "It doesnt have any STUFF
in it. The problem with Valentines Day candy is that you
gotta throw out around 90% of it out, because its got glop
inside it."

"Cherries are the worst," said
Picarillo.

"Maybe. ALL that stuff is bad. Cherries,
syrup, nuts..."

"Coconut is okay," I ventured.

"Well, you dont have to throw them
out," Calvano conceded. "Theyre okay if
theres nothing good left. But regular chocolate is the way
to go. Which is why Easter beats Valentines Day,
candy-wise."

"Marshmallow," said Picarillo.
"Sometimes the chocolate Easter eggs have marshmallow in
them."

"True," I said.

"And sometimes you cant tell until
its too late, and then you gotta eat them anyway. I mean
unless youre alone and nobody can see you spit them
out."

"You know," said Calvano, "you
gotta wonder why ALL the holidays dont have official candy.
I mean, Easter is chocolate Easter bunnies..."

"And eggs."

"Chocolate eggs, too, but to a much lesser
extent. Valentines Day is all that crappy chocolate nobody likes.
Lets see... Well, Halloween is candy corns. Thats a
good one, definitely."

Picarillo and I nodded. You either love candy
corns or you hate them, and we loved them.

"Christmas is candy canes..." Here
there was a long pause. Nobody wanted to say anything bad about
Christmas, but none of us cared much for candy canes.
"...and, uh... is that it? Is there a special Thanksgiving
candy Im not thinking of?"

"Circus peanuts," said Picarillo.

"Huh?"

"You know, theyre kind of like big
THUMBS but made out of soft candy?" We had no idea.
"Well, I always eat those for Thanksgiving."

"Picarillo, this isnt about
YOU."

"Im just saying."

"Yeah. So theres no official
Thanksgiving candy. Nothing for Columbus Day. New Years? Anybody
think of anything for New Years? St. Patricks Day?"

"Some green candy," Picarillo
suggested.

"What green candy?"

"Well, I dont know. But green would
be appropriate. Maybe something MINTY." He got a faraway
look in his eyes, as if he were thinking about mint.

"Ahem. What we want to do, is MATCH UP ALL
UN-CANDIED HOLIDAYS WITH THE PROPER CANDIES. Then we can write a
petition and get people to sign it."

"And then what?"

"Then, when a certain number of people
sign it-- I think its thirty or thirty five-- it becomes
the LAW."

We set about deciding which holiday got which
candy. We came close to blows when Picarillo insisted that
pistachio ice cream was candy, hence appropriate for St.
Patricks Day. I recall that we assigned some really
terrible candy we all hated to Labor Day, the holiday that more
or less rang in the school year. Calvano wrote up the petition,
and we actually went door to door trying to get people to sign
it.

No one did. So if youre wondering why
everyone isnt out buying malomars [yeah, its a
cookie, but that was part of the compromise we worked out with
Picarillo in return for dropping the pistachio thing] for
Memorial Day, dont blame us. We tried our best.

First Bribe

I had been a teenage summer temp at the Passaic
County ID Bureau for about three weeks when I was offered my
first bribe. The prisoner mopping up the floor tapped his mop
handle gently against my cubicle and whispered, "Got three
dollar here. You bring me back two dawg alla way, slim."

I was so startled that I made the right eye of
the cockroach I was drawing twice as big as the left eye.
"Aw geez," I muttered. My cockroach looked like Popeye
the Sailor. Well, maybe that wasnt such a bad thing. I
started to draw a can of spinach in one of the cockroachs
claws. I wasnt sure what cockroach claws looked like so I
drew lobster claws. It didnt look right, somehow. Nobody
looking at the drawing would be able to figure out that it was a
cockroach.

"Yo, slim," said the prisoner. Since
we were located in a jail and not a prison, the prisoners who did
the mopping up were all short timers, most of them in for public
drunkenness or failure to pay alimony or (once Monday Night
Football started in the late summer) hurling a beer can at the TV
set at the local bar when Howard Cosell said something
particularly annoying. "I jus put the money on toppa
the file cabinet. Bring me back two dawg when you come back from
lunch. Okay?" I kept my eyes on my mutant cockroach. You
couldnt really tell it was a can of spinach in his claw. I
wondered if Id left myself enough room on the can to write
"Spinach." Would "Spin" work? Or would it
just make everything even more confusing? I blinked a couple of
times and looked at what I had drawn. I had no idea where I was
going with the drawing. I finally allowed myself to glance over
to the file cabinet, where three dollar bills were indeed folded
up. The man with the mop had moved on to the next aisle. My heart
was racing. I folded up the sheet of paper with the
spinach-eating cockroach and trotted over to the desk where the
other worthless teen age summer temp, Isaac Duquesne [pronounced
"Doo-CANE"] was crossing names off the jury duty list.
Which is what I had been doing before the cockroach had demanded
that I draw him.

"Zack," I said, "the mop guy
gave me three bucks to get him some hot dogs for lunch!"

"The MOB GUY??"

"Mop," I said. "The guy mopping
up. He stuck three bucks on top of the cabinet and told me to get
him two hot dogs all the way for lunch."

"Holy crow. You didnt touch the
money, did you?"

"No!"

"Thats a break. It could be a SET
UP. You stick that money in your pocket and when you step out the
door, the feds grab you and the next thing you know, YOURE
mopping up the place."

"I know," I lied. "I thought
exactly the same thing. But what should I do?"

"Well, you might turn him in. But..."

"But?"

"Well, if its not a sting, then
youve made a VERY POWERFUL ENEMY. He gets thrown in
solitary for three days and when he comes out, your name is added
to The List. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah," I said, wide eyed. "The
List!" I stumbled away from the desk and found my way to the
water color, where a couple of autopsy photographers were
discussing last nights episode of "Fantasy
Island." "Hey," I said, "I have a theoretical
question. Suppose a trustee offered you some money to get him
some hot dogs--"

"How much?" said one autopsy
photographer.

"Well, just three bucks-- The dogs cost
$1.25 each, so I guess the, uh..."

"Bribe."

"...Uh, bribe, would come to 50
cents..."

"Not enough."

"Not enough," agreed the second
photographer. "The vig should be a dollar per dog."

"Minimum," said the first
photographer. "I mean, youre taking a big risk. You
smuggle in contraband dogs, youre looking at 25 years in
the can."

"Twenty five YEARS??"

"Minimum," he said. "And more if
he uses these hot dogs in a criminal act. Because I assume
youre not just talking hot dogs QUA hot dogs-- youre
talking Hot Texas Wieners?"

"Uh... well, yeah. How did you..."

"A buck twenty five. Thats a PREMIUM
price. GOTTA be the H.T.W."

"Should I... I mean, if this wasnt
totally theoretical... should I report this to the
authorities?"

"Authorities... Well, I
wouldnt," said the second autopsy photographer.
"I think the safest thing to do would be to just..."

"Quit," said the first autopsy
photographer.

"I was going to say something else, but
youre right, quitting would be even safer than what I was
going to suggest."

One of my co-workers, an older man who spent
the mornings fingerprinting new arrivals, had been listening to
this conversation. "The shutter bugs are right. If you take
the money and buy the wieners, and he DOES something with the
wieners, youre an accessory before the fact."

"If he does something with the
wieners?"

"Yup. An if you throw the money back
in his face-- I dont mean literally, you know what I mean?
-- You better be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your
life. These birds NEVER forget."

"So what should I do?" I said, all
pretense about theoretical issues going totally out the window.

"You could get him the hot dogs and eat
the money," he said. I must have looked confused, because he
continued: "When I say eat the money, I mean you pay for the
dogs out of your own pocket."

"Wont help him with the DA when this
character uses that wiener to hide an ice pick or
something," said one of the photographers.

"But what should I..."

At that moment the head of the ID Bureau called
out from across the room: "Hey-- who left this three bucks
on top of the file cabinet?"

"I did," called the prisoner with the
mop. "I wanted that kid to pick me up some lunch but I guess
he forgot."

"What did you want, Danny?"

"Two dawgs alla way."

"Okay. Ill be back in around 45
minutes."

"Keep th change," he called.

I stood where I was, blinking several times.
This helps me process information sometimes. Though not this
time.

"Just goes to show you," said the
second autopsy photographer.

"Show me what?" I said.

"The rich get richer. He who hesitates.
The early bird."

"Yeah," I said, and I went back to my
cubicle and my cockroach.

ASK THE REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

What's the Three Stooges movie where they are plumbers and they are working in a house where there is this sort of real posh dinner party going on? I think it's a Curly movie.

(Signed)

Wracking my brain

DEAR WRACKING:

I'm sorry. I'm not really that familiar with the Three Stooges' oeuvre. My area of expertise is this remaindered Three Stooges Calendar. It was purchased in February at an enormous discount at the bookstore in the mall. The fact is, the person who purchased it had his heart set on the remaindered "Dilbert" calendar, but they were all gone by the time he went calendar shopping. Such is life.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

What happened to the Hemingway Expert Guy? The Hemingway Expert Guy was interesting, at least sometimes. At least he wasn't an expert on one stupid calendar. What a stupid thing to be an expert on. You are really stupid.

(Signed)

I hate you

DEAR I:

We all miss the Hemingway Expert Guy. But he felt it was time to move on. He had one boilermaker too many at the Expert Guy St. PatrickÂ’s Day party and told the Chief Executive Expert Guy that he could make ANY topic interesting. 'How about this stupid calendar I picked up at the mall today?' said the Chief Executive Expert Guy. Before the Hemingway Expert Guy knew what had happened, he had signed a new contract. He's not going to complain about it. He will make the best of it. If you know of any decent jobs with a dental plan and a 401K, please write care of this paper.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

My girl friend and I really enjoy the remaindered Three Stooges calendar. The only thing is, we are at heart Curly people. He is by far our favorite Stooge. The remaindered Three Stooges calendar has several Curly photos, but there are almost as many Shemp pictures. Are there other Three Stooges calendars with fewer Shemp pictures?

(Signed)

Curly People

DEAR CURLY:

This is the only remaindered Three Stooges calendar I've seen. Let's all be grateful for the Curly pictures that we do have, and just thank our lucky stars there are no pictures of Joe DeRita or Joe Besser.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

How many Stooges were there altogether? Were all the extra stooges Curly replacements, or were there alternate Moes and Larrys as well?

(Signed)

Not really interested, just asking

DEAR NOT:

Once again I am being quizzed about something just a tad outside my area of expertise, but I'll give it a try. To the best of my knowledge, Moe and Larry were never replaced even for a single episode.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

I don't know who you think you're kidding. You are the worst Expert Guy ever. Why don't you get a real job? Or at least find a different subject. There are a lot of really crummy Expert Guys out there, but you are the limit.

(Signed)

Blech!

DEAR BLECH:

IÂ’m sorry you feel that way. But at the risk of sounding like a cliché, remember that no one forces you to read Ask the Remaindered Three Stooges Calendar Expert Guy. If you don't like it, turn the page and read the Sub Particle Physics Expert Guy or the Translucent Food Storage Tub Expert Guy or something more to your taste.

* * *

FUN REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR FACT: Each month is illustrated by a different still from a Three Stooges short subject-- and each still is framed by a group of mediocre line drawings of the Stooges!

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

In my opinion it is quite a rip that it's an 18-month calendar but the extra 6 months are (1) all on one page and (2) ALREADY PAST. Your thoughts, please?

(Signed)

RIPPED OFF

DEAR RIPPED:

I couldn't agree more about the shameful cramming of the extra 6 months onto one page. On the other hand, the fact that those months are already past is a big part of the reason why the calendar has been remaindered. If this calendar still had more than a year to go, it would have cost substantially more. Everything in life is a trade off, Ripped.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

Do any celebs use the remaindered Three Stooges Calendar?

(Signed)

Loves those celebs

DEAR LOVES:

One of the few things celebrities do not reveal to the general public is their calendar of choice. Nonetheless, we obtained several tapes of MTV's "Cribs" show and after careful scrutiny of various celebrity walls while the VCR is in 'pause' mode, we were able to determine that none of the carefully scrutinized walls happened to display a remaindered Three Stooges calendar. Of course 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,' but even so, we are quite disappointed.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

WouldnÂ’t it be really cool if the dates on the remaindered Three Stooges calendar were wrong? Like there were 30 days in February or something, or Halloween in June? That would be so totally Stooge. And the other thing I wanted to ask as long as I'm here-- well, I mean, I'm always HERE, in the basement, but I mean like while I'm writing this letter-- what is the relationship between the comedy group the Stooges and the band the Stooges? At first I was thinking there kind of wasn't one, but then I noticed on the first stooges album (the one with "I Want to Be Your Dog") Iggy has a kind of "Moe" haircut. Is this just a coincidence? Anyway, keep up the good work

(Signed)

Enjoys your column

DEAR ENJOYS:

Don't write to me any more. Just don't.

* * *

DEAR REMAINDERED THREE STOOGES CALENDAR EXPERT GUY:

Are there any special months named for the Three Stooges?

(Signed)

CURIOUS

DEAR CURIOUS:

Yes. The VERY SPECIAL month of Shempuary was named for one of the Stooges.

* * *

BEST OF
SHOW

Once upon a time, girls sports was an
oxymoron. At least at my high school. At least intermurally. What
the girls at Passaic Valley High School had instead of field
hockey and softball was Girls Show --a sort of all-girl
mini-Olympics held in the gym over the course of two
action-packed evenings.

Nobody knows exactly how it started. My father
claims that Girls Show dates all the way back to the earliest
days of PVHS, and he was a member of Passaic Valley High
Schools first graduating class in 1943. "It was a big
deal," he says. "For the, you know, girls."

By the time my sister entered PVHS in the mid
sixties, Girls Show had become the pivotal event of the school
year (for, you know, girls). Incoming freshman girls had to
declare their colors during the first weeks of school-- Green or
White (the PVHS school colors). The breakdown was more or less
geographical; Little Falls was mostly Green, Totowa was mostly
White, and West Paterson was split down the middle. Green and
White rivalries were intense. Life long best friends who found
themselves in opposite camps sometimes didnt speak to each
other for four years. Greens and Whites were like crips and
bloods, only much more insane and far less forgiving. And instead
of shivs or guns, they used hoops.

Hoops? Well, yes. According to one of my
sisters antediluvian Girls Show programs, competitive
events included Exercise, Dance, and Hoops. I know that
hoops is a slang term for basketball, but I have been
assured that in Girls Show it refers to something else. Im
not quite sure what. In my yearbook there are Girls Show photos
in which girls are indeed holding large hoops but its not
clear what they are doing with them. One reason I decided to
attend this years Girls Show was to discover just what it
was they did with those hoops.

Another reason is that (in theory) you spend
three hours watching teenage girls flip out, and this weeks
column basically writes itself. I was pretty sure teenage girls
would be flipping out, because thats pretty much the raison
dê´²e of Girls Show. You have all the high emotion,
nervous breakdowns, and psychotic episodes we normally associate
with beauty pageants, but Girls Show makes them available to all
girls, not just the beautiful ones. I guess thats
commendable.

To my dismay, Hoops is no longer included in
the competition, and even my sister isnt sure what it was.
This is surprising; she was a Green Hoops committee head. She was
involved in a major scandal. The Greens and Whites spied on each
other incessantly in those days; for one thing, they wanted to
steal each others routines, and for another, they wanted to
catch their rivals in a breach of the rules. For instance, one
rule allowed only a certain amount of money to be spent on each
costume. It was a very small amount, less than ten dollars, and a
receipt had to be presented for every buttonhook and zipper. This
rule was flouted almost openly. My sister and her friends were
penalized because they held an illegal practice. For reasons that
make absolutely no sense to me, the teams were permitted only a
limited number of practices. Penalizing athletes for practicing
too much seems to me like penalizing students for studying too
much, but that was the rule, and one of the White committee heads
photographed the Greens practicing whatever it was they were
doing (apparently not Hoops), and the event was forfeit. 35 years
later my sister still can not say the name of the White spy
without turning a deep purple and ripping a chunk of Formica from
the kitchen counter.

When I was at PVHS a few years later Girls Show
was still a huge extravaganza, but during my junior year
intermural girls sports were established, and so there were other
outlets for girls who wanted to have nervous breakdowns and
psychotic episodes. By the mid eighties, Girls Show had dwindled
in importance to such an extent that it was actually skipped for
a few years. And then, inexplicably, like toga parties or reruns
of The Monkees, it was back. It was a little different-- no
hoops, and everything was crammed into one night-- but it was
back.

This years theme-- did I mention that
theres always an over-riding theme?-- was "Simply the
Best." As far as I could tell, absolutely nothing in the
show had any relation to this theme, which is pretty amazing when
you think how vague a theme it is. The White cheerleaders, for
instance, dressed as apes from the recent remake of "Planet
of the Apes." They even wore ape masks. The combination of
ape masks, mini skirts, and go-go boots (go-go boots are back
too, I guess) was pretty amazing. The Green Cheerleaders were
dressed as astronauts, but regular astronauts, not the kind in
"Planet of the Apes." (Not the kind in outer space,
either, come to think of it, unless our space suits are made of
spandex now). The Exercise event (actually a sort of cross
between modern dance and calisthenics) was performed by wooden
soldiers (White) and Gene Kelly-type sailors (Green). The Pom-Pom
competition was once more between Apes and Astronauts, though
these may have been special pom-pom apes and not the same apes
who had been doing the cheers earlier. Dance, which was pretty
much the same idea as exercise only without the jumping jacks,
was a duel between a platoon of Janet Jacksons and a platoon of
Madonnas. The Madonnas were all early model, circa 1984,
Madonnas. But the wigs were so bad they looked more like the
Florry-Dorries. They won anyway-- one of two events the Greens
took in an otherwise all-White evening.

After the dancing, large portions of the
audience left. Dance, Exercise, and Pom-Poms were the events
everyone came to see. Why they put the big events up front is a
mystery-- who would watch the entire Oscar show if they gave out
all the acting awards in the first hour and saved Best Short
Subject (Live Action) for the climax? The Girls Show equivalent
of Best Achievement in Sound Editing was CAGE-VOLLEY-- volleyball
played with a huge ball the size of a compact car. You could hit
it as often as you needed to keep it off the floor. That seemed
to be the only rule. It took eight or ten girls hitting it
simultaneously to get or keep the ball in motion. This went on
forever, and when it was over there were some relays, and then
the snotty kid behind me informed me there was no event called
hoops scheduled, and then the winners were announced.
The Janet Jacksons more or less flipped out when the Madonnas
walked off with the Dance event, but the Janet and Madonna
committee heads (they had HEADS spelled out across
the rear ends of their shorts, which made me wonder what their
hats would have said) hugged briefly when they were introduced--
Im sure photos of that are popping up all over the Internet
even as you read this.

The next morning my sister casually asked me
who had won, and I told her the Whites had taken everything but
Dance. I said I was sure that if theyd still included hoops
in the show, the Greens would have coasted to victory but she
thought I was being sarcastic. Even over the phone, I could hear
the Formica being snapped off the kitchen counter. My sister is
53 and probably due for a new counter anyway.

Blue
No More!

My loyal readers will be happy to hear that my
butt is no longer blue. I think it was blue for about 2 days. You
probably think that isnt very long, but youre wrong.

The household plumbing was acting up. And
acting up is exactly what it seemed like-- Id
turn on the shower, and the water going down the bathtub drain
would re-emerge in my kitchen sink; Id turn on the faucet
in the bathroom sink, and the bathtub drain made a noise like the
Phantom of the Opera slamming his forearm down on the keyboard of
that pipe organ. (How did he get that organ down into the sewer,
anyway?). Id do the dishes, and moments later find my
toilet bowl full of soapsuds.

It was kind of entertaining, to tell the truth.
Guys at work would say, "Lemme tell ya, my crazy kid went
out and got a silver bone in his nose --on purpose," and I
could reply, "Ahh, thats nothin, my nutty toilet
thinks its the kitchen sink." Then the guys at work
would all look at each other and go, "Uh... yeah...
yeah..." and slowly back away. Productivity on the job went
way up. And did I get a bonus?

When the toilet wasnt filling up with
suds-- BLUE suds, incidentally, for reasons I shall explain
shortly-- it was flushing itself. Id be in the other room
sitting at the computer not writing my column, and suddenly the
toilet would flush. Again, it was kind of entertaining. I had a
poltergeist, and it had to go to the bathroom. How cool is that?
One night the toilet flushed itself seven times in half an hour.
Obviously my poltergeist had ordered the Frisco Melt for dinner,
and reacted the same way I had. It was nice we had something in
common, even if it was a digestive tract totally unreceptive to
Frisco Melts.

But over the course of a week, these flushes
started getting a bit more... emphatic. I thought that the
flushes were getting a little louder. Then I noticed that the
excellent reading material I keep in the bathroom was sort of
water-damaged, and a bit blue around the edges. Then, following
my bi-weekly dishwash, there was an unscheduled flush and on my
next visit to the bathroom I found blue suds on the walls, on the
tiles, on Miss February.

It was now obvious to me that the flushes were
getting out of control. I had let things slide in the hope that
the toilet would get bored and go back to being a good little
bathroom fixture. As every parent on the planet learns, THIS
NEVER HAPPENS. A line had to be drawn.

"Look," I said. "Fun is fun, but
this really has to stop." Well, I didnt actually say
that to my toilet. I said it to my daughter about 6 years ago, in
regard to her cramming Doritos between the couch cushions as a
hedge against a Dorito famine. While I was not saying it, the
toilet flushed itself again. The water formed itself into a large
blue mushroom cloud, with the suds taking the role of the
mushroom cap. It was kind of like a large blue portobello
mushroom cloud. (I am an expert on portobello mushrooms, as my
digestive tract reacts to portobello mushrooms in the same way it
reacts to Frisco Melts).

I wiped the blue suds from my glasses and
decided to take some action. I picked up the phone, dialed, said
"Terry! Can I borrow your video camera? My toilet is
erupting into big blue mushroom clouds!"

Terry said, "Uh... yeah... yeah..."
and backed away slowly. At any rate he didnt lend me the
camera. I knew I would have to document this, though, in order to
cash in. And cash in I would, because I clearly had the NUMBER
ONE TOURIST ATTRACTION IN WESTERN NJ, sitting in my bathroom. I
started writing ad copy.

My header was "The Big Blue
Experience," and I suppose this is a good place to explain
why the big experience was blue. I put those blue toilet things
in my toilet tank. They turn the water dark blue, and then nobody
can tell you never clean the bowl. Its the greatest boon to
guys living alone ever invented. I happen to use the incredibly
cheap generic kind. Youre not supposed to touch them with
your bare hands, because the main ingredient is indelible blue
ink.

I had about 2000 words written about the
wonders of my toilet bowl-- I was trying to work out a tie-in
with the Tonya Harding-Amy Fisher smackdown-- and I was about to
email it out to my mailing list of Japanese Travel Agencies, when
I had to employ the toilet bowl in its all-but-forgotten capacity
as a toilet bowl.

Seconds later, my toilet flushed itself while I
was aboard, and I had what might be described as an out-of-toilet
experience. I rode the mushroom cloud about 8 feet into the air.

I had NO idea how cold toilet bowl water was.
How cold is it? My scream was heard as far north as Morris
County. I dont remember the scream myself because the
intense cold apparently destroyed large portions of my brain,
including the part where scream memories are stored. When I came
out of my cold-induced coma, Amy Fisher had pulled out of the
fight and my butt was blue. A deep, Royal Blue, like a baboon. I
spent a considerable chunk of the next two days trying to do
something about that, and I learned a lot in the process
(Ill spare you the details, but from now on I will remember
to use Drain-o ONLY as directed on the label). The strange
behavior of my plumbing-- rather of my apartments
plumbing-- was due to what is technically known as gunk in
the pipes, and its been cleared up. All the water
goes where I tell it to, and no longer makes any rude noises
while its going.

Its a little disappointing that my
bathroom is no longer the 8th wonder of the world; but
on the other hand, neither is my rear end.

Observations
on the Passing Scene

[25 words into this weeks column the
phone rings. Stupidly, I answer it.]

ME: Hello.

EMMA: Hi Dad!

ME: Hi, Emma. I cant talk right now.
Im writing my column.

EMMA: Well, stop. Interview us.

ME: Us?

EMMA: Me and Holly. Holly is on the phone, too.

HOLLY: Hi.

ME: Hi. And what is the interview about?

EMMA: YOURE the interviewer. Its up
to you.

ME: Im kind of in the middle of--

EMMA: I thought you were a PROFESSIONAL.

ME: Well, live and learn. Ive got to get
back to--

EMMA: Ask Holly about the Britney Spears movie.
She saw it.

ME: * cough * How was the Britney Spears movie?
I didnt know there was a Britney Spears movie...

HOLLY: Well, I thought it was weird that she
was the prettiest one in the movie. There are three friends, and
shes way the best looking one. It was kind of weird...

ME: You felt they should have cast girls better
looking than Britney as her friends.

HOLLY: Well, no... Im not even going to
try to explain...

ME: Okay...

HOLLY: She was kind of too perfect. And
flawless...

ME: Perfect AND flawless. Wait, I have to get
that down...

HOLLY: And the most innocent. The three girls
are all best friends and they make this pact that when they grow
up, theyre going to open their THING.

ME: Hold on. I dont think--

EMMA: She means a TIME CAPSULE.

ME: Ah.

HOLLY: And Britney was going to see her mom.
They have issues. It wasnt really for little kids...

EMMA: And yet, it was directed towards them.

HOLLY: Yes...

EMMA: You know, whatever you want to say about
it, "SPICE WORLD" was not directed towards little kids.
It had a lot of subtle things only a sophisticated audience would
pick up on.

ME: Excuse me, I just dropped my jaw and it
rolled under the couch. Hang on...

HOLLY: I saw Britney Spears in concert. Her
jacket caught on fire. She was, like, stripping, and she threw
her jacket and it landed on a pyro and it burned up, and she made
a bitchy face. I havent seen the Mandy Moore movie. But I
hear the GUY in it cries. I want to see it.

EMMA: The only think I like about Mandy Moore
is the disc player she has in her first video? Its BLUE. I
loved that.

HOLLY: My AMIGO is the same color as that disc
player!

EMMA: A lot of people think the Amigo is gross,
but--

HOLLY: WHO thinks its gross?

EMMA: I dont know.

HOLLY: Well, who? Im really hurt.

EMMA: Hey, I like it.

HOLLY: I know. You got to ride around in it
with the top down. Not many people get the full AMIGO EXPERIENCE.

EMMA: Oh wait. Lets tell about the
virtual kitties.

ME: Im still writing down the Amigo
Experience. This is a car?

HOLLY: The virtual kitties are Emma and Holla.

ME: Holly?

EMMA: Holla. Mine is a virtual month old.

HOLLY: Mine is a virtual year old. It got mad
today. It didnt want to cuddle, it wanted to sleep. It went
down to zero happy faces. Theyre the ugliest cats.
Theyre like pencil drawings.

HOLLY: My hair right now is pretty ghetto.
Because Loren cornrowed it. We watched "Now and Then."

EMMA: While she was cornrowing your hair.

HOLLY: Yes.

EMMA: The girl in the movie has to eat every
hour or she gets sick.

ME: Which girl?

EMMA: The fat girl. I dont remember her
name. She says if she doesnt eat every hour she gets
nauseous. One time me and Holly went to the pizza place and tried
to pay with pennies and the guy said Do I look like a
bank?

HOLLY: Tell about the time we went to
Phillipsburg and almost got killed.

EMMA: No. Oh okay. We yelled at the guy with
red hair. Then we stalled at the red light. Because you
distracted me.

EMMA: Hes very naive in many ways... He
used to wear red ruby slippers. They werent really RUBY, of
course. They werent really slippers, either...

HOLLY: Were they at least red?

EMMA: I think so. Or very close to it. Maybe
not pure CRAYOLA red, but within a crayon or two of it.

HOLLY: Not red-violet...

EMMA: No, much closer than that. Hey dad, tell
her about how your toilet blew up. Oh, crap, I have the hiccups.

HOLLY: I know what to do. You have to get a
glass of water...

EMMA: Okay...

HOLLY: And drink from the opposite side.

EMMA: Huh?

HOLLY: You have to drink from the side you
dont usually drink from.

EMMA: What?

HOLLY: I mean from the TOP. You have to, like,
bend over, and drink upside down? That makes your hiccups go
away.

EMMA: Aaagghh. Im all wet.

HOLLY: Youre doing it wrong. You have to
practice.

EMMA: Okay... Hey. It worked.

HOLLY: Well, tell everybody I told you.

EMMA: But this is really HARD. Ill just
hold my breath.

HOLLY: That doesnt work.

EMMA: Yes it does!

HOLLY: No-- you always cheat when you hold your
breath.

EMMA: If youre with your friends and
youre trying to see who can hold their breath the longest
you cheat. Not if youre trying to get over hiccups. What
would be the point? It would be insane.

HOLLY: Eating a spoonful of peanut butter
works, too.

EMMA: I seriously doubt it. Dad, we want to
talk about your bathroom.

ME: No.

SPECIAL
GETTING REALLY HONKED OFF ABOUT STUFF EDITION

Boy, people are really losing it this week.

I havent even seen 5 seconds of Olympic
figure skating this year, but the general consensus seems to be
that it should have been obvious even to a blind, brain-damaged
tree frog that the Canadians skated the pants off the Russians.
(Not literally, of course, or Id have been glued to the
Olympic figure skating. In fact, Im ready to subscribe to
the "Pants-Off Figure Skating Channel"). So when the
Russians ended up with the gold medal on a 5-4 vote from the
judges, there was such a stink that an actual investigation was
launched and it turned out the Russian and French judges had made
a deal and now both the Canadians AND the Russians have gold
medals, as if the Olympics was one of those dopey kids birthday
parties where everybody gets a present so nobody feels bad, and
the French judge is in disgrace (which is the crucial first step
to a book deal and her own talk show). What Im still kind
of confused about is, if the Canadians were so clearly superior,
how come the vote was 5-4 instead of 7-2? I mean, my math is a
little rusty, but by my count there were three other judges who
voted for the Russians. As far as I can determine, this
isnt a scandal. And apparently its not a scandal
because those three judges werent expected to vote for the
Canadians even if they levitated. All I can say is: Huh? Wha?

Well, anyway, Im confused (as always) but
not particularly mad about this. I have other things to be mad
about, such as the lack of the Pants-Off Figure Skating Channel
on my cable service. And other people have plenty to be mad
about, too. This week Karen M. of Lowell Massachusetts was
accused of attacking another woman because she (the second woman)
brought 13 items to the "12 Items or Less" checkout
line at the supermarket. First, according to press reports, Karen
said the other woman couldnt count and swore at her. Then,
as the unfortunate mis-counter was walking home, Karen is
reported to have pulled alongside her, "exchanged
words," gotten out and beat her up before driving away. Ont
he one hand I want this Karen person, assuming she did what
shes accused of doing, locked up, and on the other hand I
want to turn my baseball cap around and put on a pair of pants 5
sizes too big so I can say "You GO, girl!"

Well, not really.I think the reaction was
extreme. I have been behind people on that line who have 25 or 30
items in the cart. Instead of beating them up, I have become an
expert on the Worlds Fattest Baby. I have never even said
"Excuse me, but it seems to me you have more than 12 items
there." I never say anything. Oh, sometimes I say,
"Wow, this baby weighs over 300 pounds!" or something
like that. But this never results in the person in front of me
slapping himself in the head and going "Oh no! I didnt
realize this is the express line! Excuse me while I put all my
stuff back in the cart and go to the rear of one of those really
long lines full of old ladies buying an 18 months supply of
cat food and Depenz." Personally, I feel that violence is
never the answer and you should not be beat up unless you bring
at least 15 items to the "12 Items or Less" checkout
line.

The weeks most amazing flip-out--
actually the flip out itself occurred a couple of years back, but
the denouement was just days ago-- took place in Houston, Texas,
where a 54 year old man was convicted of aggravated assault for
shooting his girl friend because he thought she was about to say
"New Jersey." (The Associated Press headlined the story
"Word Rage"). It turns out there are a whole bunch of
words that cause this guy to react like the guy in the Abbott and
Costello movies who turns into a maniac when he hears
"Niagara Falls." ("NIAGRA FALLS! Slowly I turn,
step by step, inch by inch..."). Besides "New
Jersey," you dont want this dude within earshot when
you say "Mars," "Snickers," or
"Wisconsin," either. Im not sure what the story
is with Wisconsin. If it had been just Mars, Snickers, and New
Jersey, Id say we were dealing with a former employee of
the Mars candybar factory in Hacketstown NJ. [A friend of mine
from, as luck would have it, Wisconsin, says: "I have had
the same response to the word Snickers.

But only in the context of when I hear someone
say, I ate the last Snickers."] What the wire
services dont explain is why he thought she was about to
say New Jersey. Perhaps she got that look on her face
that people always get when theyre about to blurt out the
name of the Garden State. Or perhaps she was in the middle of a
sentence that could only end with New Jersey, such as "The
third state admitted to the union was..." or "I
understand that both Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen are
natives of..." or "Its really stupid that Staten
Island is part of New York City when even a moron can look at a
map and see theres like a whole BAY between it and New
York, while theres just this little creek separating it
from..." or "The most wonderfulest place on the whole
planet is..." Maybe she just wouldnt shut up about
what a terrific place this is. I can see getting annoyed, but
still.

No word yet about the sentence. The guy could
spend the next 20 years in prison. And they tend to be pretty
tough about things like that in Texas. Unless of course the Texas
judge makes a deal with the French judge, in which case all bets
are off...

PARALLEL
PARKING

"You know," said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams, "Im trying to be reasonable about this."
We were in the midst of circling the block for the 4th
time. Once again, a green Chrysler was occupying the space in
front of the Custom Neon Sign Shop where Mulberry Street Joey
Clams intended to park the custom Neon Sign Shop van. I pointed
out that there were plenty of spaces further down the block, and
there was even one directly across the street from the Custom
Neon Sign Shop, but Mulberry Street Joey Clams was not interested
in any of them. "This is a matter of principle," he
said. "Its like... you know the way those two
countries are always fighting?"

Stupidly, I said, "Which two
countries?"

"You know. Theyre always fighting.
One of them is the country where they wear those hats."

"Oh. Of course."

"Right. So anyway, you could stop them
from fighting in two seconds if you had everybody in the one
country just pack up and move to some place else. And
theres a lot of places where theres a lot of room. My
cousin Frank drove to Vegas once, and he says once you get out
past like Philadelphia, theres maybe 3 towns. Its all
cows and stuff till you hit Vegas. You could move everybody in
that one country some place like that, and nobodyd even
know they were there."

"The people with the hats."

"Nah. THEYD never move. But the
other ones... well, I think they wear some kind of hats too, now
that you mention it..." We were coming around the corner for
the 5th time now, but Mulberry Street Joey Clams had
calmed down a bit. He was thinking about hats. "...anyway,
the point is, NEITHER of them would move, even though it would
stop all the fighting, because first of all... is that guy
pulling out?" A fat guy had waddled over to the Chrysler and
unlocked the back door. He tossed a bag of oranges in the back
seat. Then he waddled away. Mulberry Street Joey Clams pounded on
his horn without getting the attention of the fat guy. "Un.
Be. LEAVE. Ay. Bull. You ever see anything so rude? Well, now we
know hes at Angelos Bakery." Mulberry Street
Joey Clams pulled the van up to the curb near the intersection of
Prince Street. I started to open my door but he grabbed the
collar of my jacket. "Were not parked. Were just
PAUSING for a second."

"Weve parked this far away from the
Shop before," I pointed out. "Many many times."

"Not today. ORANGE BOY does not get my
space today." He tapped the steering wheel. "What kind
of a guy throws a bag a oranges in the back seat of the car and
just WALKS AWAY like nothing happened?"

"Uh, I dont know, Mulberry Street
Joey Clams."

"Ill tell you. A guy who needs to
learn WHATS WHAT. Lets go." He got out of the
car and strode resolutely towards the bakery. I uncrumpled the
collar of my jacket and followed.

The fat guy was seated at a little round table
sipping a cup of espresso.

"Excuse me," said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams. "I believe you would be the gentleman with the
green Chrysler across the street?"

"I would be? Nah. I WOULD BE the gentleman
with the Lincoln Continental parked three blocks down, but things
didnt work out. So I ended up with the green Chrysler.
Anyway, its not for sale."

"I dont wish to BUY it," said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "I would like you to move it.
Its in my space."
"I must have missed the sign." Mulberry Street Joey
Clams did not say what sign? on cue, but the fat guy
covered for him like a pro. "The sign that says no
parking unless youre the hep cat with the sharp jacket and
the bad hair cut." He took another sip of his espresso
and said, "Ill be wanting another of these,
Dolores."

"Theres always a principle involved
when it comes to Hep Cats. Well, lets see if I cant
figure out what the principle is here. Could it be..." He
shifted his bulk and gained his feet, and took in the view from
the plate glass window. "Ah. I believe the principle is, the
Hep Cat doesnt know how to parallel park. Well, fear not,
Hep Cat, I shall be moving my car after one or two more
espressos, and then theyll be plenty of room for you to
slide your vehicle into place..."

There were more cars parked now and fewer
spaces as a result. But there was now a space directly behind the
green Chrysler. "I know whats goin on
here," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "This is
reverse psychology. You think Im gonna move my van and
parallel park just to prove to you I can do it."

"Not at all," said the fat guy.
"Youd have to know how to parallel park in order to do
that."

"HA! Now youre doing REVERSE reverse
psychology. But Im waaaaay ahead of you!" He ran out
to the van, put it into gear, pulled catty-corner across the
asphalt until he was parallel with the Chrysler, and expertly
shot back into the space behind it. He honked the horn so the fat
guy would look up. The fat guy paid no attention. Then Mulberry
Street Joey Clams pulled out of the space, backed across the
street, and pulled into his original spot.

The fat guy patted his lips dry with a napkin,
left some change on the table, and nodded to Mulberry Street Joey
Clams as he left the bakery. Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I
leaned against the van as we watched the fat guy start up his car
and pull away.

"We win," said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams succinctly. We got in the van and pulled out. A Mustang
pulled into the spot the Chrysler had just left. The space behind
it had already been taken by a sub-compact. Mulberry Street Joey
Clams glanced into the rear view mirror just in time to see a
Chevy taking the spot hed just vacated.

"I thought any second you were gonna tell
that guy to stop calling you a hep cat," I said, partly to
get his mind off the fact that we were going to be parking about
6 blocks away.

When I was 14, I got a super 8 movie camera for
Christmas, and I spent the rest of the winter making movies. This
was back when it snowed more than once a month during the winter,
so many of these movies featured snow.

The other thing I did that winter was ride my
sled down the hill at the end of Brookhill Place. Brookhill Place
was maybe the most perfectly named street ever: it terminated in
a hill with a brook at the bottom. It was a steep hill, but not
too steep, and if you had enough velocity and aimed correctly,
you could shoot right over a little foot bridge and end up on the
other side of the brook. I spent a lot of time sledding that
winter because I sensed that pretty soon I was going to be too
old to do any more sledding, and I wanted to get as much of it in
as I could before I looked like a complete idiot. It was about 3
years too late to start worrying about that, but I didnt
realize this at the time.

The first super 8 movie I made was called
"Ice" and it was 49 seconds long. We had an ice storm
the day after Christmas and I went out and shot two rolls of film
showing all these things in my neighborhood coated with ice. When
I got the footage back from the drug store, I found that all the
stuff Id photographed with the sun shining directly through
the ice looked really neat, and everything else didnt, so I
cut out all the non-neat stuff. I went through my records looking
for a 49-second song to play behind my movie-- this was well
before the days of sound-on-film home movies-- but there
arent very many 49-second songs. The best I could come up
with was my sisters copy of "Stay" by Maurice
Williams and the Zodiacs, which was 1 minute and 39 seconds (and
still the shortest single ever to hit number one on the charts).
It didnt make a great deal of sense behind the images. My
sister said, "Whos supposed to stay?? The ice??
Its dangerous! When you get a car and have to pay your own
car insurance premiums, youll understand!" I shot a
title card-- "ICE"-- and held it for 50 seconds. The
title was on screen one second longer than the movie itself,
which is probably another worlds record. My sister had some
choice comments about that, too.

At that point I ran out of ideas for new
movies. I did a kind of sequel called "MORE ICE," but
like most sequels, it was basically a retread of the first one,
and considerably longer, since I now realized I would need at
least two and a half minutes of film in order to find a suitable
piece of music. This time I set it to Simon and Garfunkels
"Hazy Shade of Winter," which turned out to be longer
than two and a half minutes. "So is this like your
signature, holding the title on screen until everybody in the
audience starts throwing stuff?" asked my sister. "Or
is that just what youre going to do with your
"Ice" movies? Is the next one going to be Still
More Ice?"

Well, there was no way I would give her the
satisfaction making another ice movie. I junked the plans for
"Ice III" ["Still More Ice" indeed! What a
stupid title! Girls!]. Maybe it was time to start including
humans in my movies, I thought. So I slapped a roll of film into
my camera and went outside and found two kids. They were about 10
years old. "Im going to make a movie," I said.
"Whats your name? Eric? And you? Tommy? Okay. Tommy,
hit Eric." Tommy hit Eric. "Okay. Now, Eric, hit
Tommy." It was so. At that point my inspiration more or less
evaporated. "Okay, uh, now keep hitting each other..."
So they wailed away at each other for about three minutes, at
which point I was out of film. They kept punching each other and
I walked towards home. I figured maybe I could salvage the film
in the editing. "You look pretty glum," said Mr.
DeYoung, the local plumbing inspector, who was on his roof
adjusting the TV antenna (the ice storm had knocked it out of
whack). I explained the problem. "Well, if you cant
figure out how to end a story, the way the pros handle it, they
have everybody killed in an accident. Ties up all the loose
ends." In a flash, I saw how my film had to conclude. I
grabbed my sled, pulled Tommy and Eric apart, and dragged them to
Brookhill Place.

Tommy and Eric stood at the top of the hill.
Following my directions, Tommy pushed Eric, and as Eric lost his
balance, he grabbed Tommy and hung onto his coat, and they both
rolled down the hill. THATS going to look great on the big
screen, I thought with satisfaction. They were still punching
each other at the bottom of the hill. I chugged down and took
some close shots of them mixing it up. Then I went back up the
hill to where a large rock was embedded in the ground. Perhaps
80% of the rock was below ground and it couldnt be budged
without a stick of dynamite, but the audience wouldnt know
that. I shot it, gently rocking the camera back and forth, to
make it appear that the rock was shaking from the stupendous
blows being delivered by Tommy and Eric 50 yards down the hill.
Then I got on my sled and stuck the camera in front, and pushed
off and hurtled towards Tommy and Eric. The idea was, the camera
was showing things from the rocks point of view. Id
get closer and closer, faster and faster, and then Tommy and Eric
would notice I was about to hit them, and Id cut to black
at the moment of impact. It was going to be, I dunno, symbolic of
the futility of something or other. I decided that Simon and
Garfunkels "I Am a Rock" would be the perfect
music for this movie. So I got closer and closer, faster and
faster, and they noticed I was about to hit, and Tommy and Eric
stepped apart, and I shot right part them and went into the
brook. "Wow, thisll be a great shot!" I remember
thinking as I went over the edge It may well have been a great
shot, but since the camera snapped open and the film was ruined,
Ill never know. I got out of the creek bed and dragged my
sled and my camera home. I wasnt yet aware that the film
was ruined. Tommy and Eric were still punching each other. Maybe
theyre still punching each other; I dont know for
sure, because that was the last time I went sledding there.

THE
PHANTOM OF BROWERTOWN ROAD

Main Street in Little Falls ran parallel to the
Passaic River for about three-quarters of a mile. For most of
that stretch, there was nothing along the north side of the
street except the sidewalk and a waist high wire fence separating
the sidewalk from a steep hill sloping down to the river. But the
last couple of blocks before the river took a hard left turn
towards Paterson and the Great Falls, this changed drastically.
To the naked eye there was not much difference between the north
side of the Main Street and the south side. They were both
crammed with shops, little restaurants, and storefronts. To the,
er, UN-naked eye, however, they were practically on different
planets. The buildings on the north side had been erected on the
edge of that precipitous hillside, and from the rear everything
was a jumble of support beams, jutting platforms, overhangs, and
crude jerry rigging. Since the general public never saw it (the
other side of the river was an intractable wilderness surrounding
a sewage treatment plant), structural repairs were haphazard and
ugly, with plywood or sheets of scrap metal nailed over rear
windows. Paint was allowed to flake off for years at a time, and
when repainting was done, it was slapdash and often done with
whatever colors happened to be at hand, leading to some really
interesting effects.

Calvano, Picarillo and I had first stumbled
upon this vista during a drought that allowed us to cross the
Passaic River hopping from rock to rock, following a pleasant
morning at the sewage treatment plant, where we had been
picnicking and wearing rubber monster masks. At first we
couldnt believe our eyes. We knew we were looking up at the
rear of Main Street, but it was grotesque beyond our wildest
dreams. It looked like a Salvador Dali version of a Colorado
mining town circa 1850. The contrast between the spiffy, neatly
painted facades and the ramshackle back ends was staggering.

"This is just like that story in Creepy #
7," said Calvano, "where the guy accidentally puts on
special glasses that allow him to see that half the people in the
world are actually MONSTERS." Picarillo and I nodded. It was
EXACTLY like that story. We felt like we were being vouchsafed a
glimpse of the TRUE Little Falls. We had no idea that
Friendlys Liquor Store, so cheerfully lit, and with those
tasteful pictures of smiling bottles with big eyes in the display
windows, had a back door with a huge crack in it and a set of
shoddy wooden stairs that ended abruptly after four steps and
went NOWHERE.

"When I grow up Im gonna live back
here," said Picarillo.

Calvano and I nodded. We would all live back
here. We had never suspected there was anything this great in our
stupid hometown. And best of all, some of the merchants piled all
their unwanted crap in wooden boxes or metal cans and just left
them on the hillside! We scrambled up the slope to examine these
treasure troves.

By far, the best box had been discarded by the
Class-A Photography Studio: broken picture frames, empty chemical
bottles, rolls of film negative... Calvano and I battled over the
negative rolls. "Let GO! Im gonna strap em
across my chest in an X, like BANDIT AMMO, only
its gonna be * grunt * film!" We rolled down the slope
and divided up the negatives. Back at the box, Picarillo was
examining the photograph of a young girl. Calvano and I looked
over his shoulders.

"Oh, yeah. Thats Mary Flowers,"
said Calvano. "She was kidnapped and murdered 30 years ago.
She was never found. It was cannibals. They say that people see
her ghost walking down Browertown Road, where she used to live.
And if she sees YOU and waves at you, it means the cannibals have
their eye on YOU. Fact."

"Wow!" said Picarillo.

"I wouldnt take that picture,
Picarillo," said Calvano, adjusting his negatives slightly
so that they no longer chafed his armpits. "Taking home that
picture can only lead to heartbreak, terror, and a long painful
death."

"Im gonna put it in my room,"
said Picarillo. We hopped the fence and headed for home.

When Picarillo split off at the Park, I said,
"Where did you find out all that stuff about Mary
Flowers?"

"Who? Oh, the picture? I just made that
up. Geez, didnt you LOOK at it? Shes got a button on
her sweater that says My Favorite Monkee is Peter.
Anyway, its Amy Anderson. She lives next to my cousin Frank
on Browertown Road."

One end of my film-negative ammo belt had come
loose. I tucked it back into my pants. "Well, whats
gonna happen if Picarillo sees her? Hell know you just made
it all up."

"Youre exasperating. Were
talking about Picarillo. But thats a really good idea. Come
on!" Calvano and I took off at full speed towards Browertown
Road, negatives flapping in the breeze.

It was tough coming to terms with Amy Anderson;
she insisted on 10 feet of film negative and one of
Calvanos rubber spiders (his collection was immense and
news of it had even reached Browertown Road) before she would
agree to help us. But it was worth it. A couple of days later, as
we were eating lunch at Mainline Pizza, Amy walked up to the
window, stopped dead, and stared at Picarillo. It took him about
2 minutes to register her presence. Suddenly he choked on a
pepperoni. "Its THE DEAD FLOWER GIRL!" he cried.

Picarillo ran to the door, but The Dead Flower
Girl was nowhere to be seen. "You guys are trying to make me
think Im crazy, but I know YOU SAW HER TOO!"

"What did she look like, Picarillo? I
mean, did it look like shed been... you know,
CANNIBALIZED?"

"Yes!" he said. "Well, you
couldnt actually SEE it... but you could TELL..."

For the next couple of weeks, Amy would drift
into Picarillos line of vision at odd moments and then
vanish as he flipped out. Once she came up behind him while he
was on line for the matinee at the Oxford Theater and whispered
"...They HUNGER for you..." and then walked away.

"Did you see that??" he yelled
excitedly. "Anybody? Did anybody see the Dead Flower
Girl?"

"That was Amy Anderson," said a kid
in line behind us.

"No," said Picarillo, angrily,
"It was THE DEAD FLOWER GIRL!" They nearly came to
blows. But it was the last straw. After the movie, Picarillo took
the photo and returned it to the mini-garbage dump behind Main
Street. He took a bad tumble in the process and almost landed in
the Passaic River but as he said, at least the cannibals
didnt get him.

The
Mad Projectionist

"It is with great reluctance that I impart
this sacred trust to you," Chuck, the manager of the Park
Theater, said to me. "Dont screw it up this
time." He handed me a ten-dollar bill. "We already
called the order in. You just have to drive down there and bring
the food back. It shouldnt take more than 10 minutes."

I nodded earnestly. Or rather, in what I hoped
was an earnest looking manner, since I had already calculated
that the trip to and from the roast beef sandwich shop was going
to take about an hour. There were two incredible new games at the
drug store down the block-- they were sort of like pinball
machines, but the action took place on a sort of television
monitor. One was called "Pong," which had been out for
a while (though not here in Caldwell NJ) and the other was called
"Tank," and they were unbelievably exciting. In
"Pong," when played solo, you bounced a video ball
against a video wall until you missed. Then the game was over. In
"Tank," you and an opponent each maneuvered video tanks
(well, it SAID they were tanks-- they were actually video
rectangles, if you want to get technical) into position, and then
fired at each other until one of you blew up. The tanks
didnt actually blow up, but after a certain number of
direct hits the game would abruptly end and the words
"PLAYER TWO IS BLOWN UP" would appear. As I said, they
were unbelievably exciting. And I fully intended to play both
games several times before picking up the roast beef sandwiches.
I was figuring on 8 sets of "Pong," and then I would
call Chuck from the pay phone and tell him Id sustained a
flat tire on the way to the sandwich shop but I was almost done
changing it and everything was under control. Then Id
challenge one of the locals to "Tank," play a couple of
rounds, and get the food. Cold roast beef was still pretty good.

Everything went according to plan until I made
my call and got a busy signal. In disgust I aborted the plans to
play "Tank," got the food, and arrived back at the Park
Theater a mere 40 minutes or so after departing. There was a
crush of disgruntled patrons outside the office door, and Chuck
was scrawling out passes and handing them to the surly citizens.
There were more than a dozen people clamoring for refunds or
passes, and this was all the more impressive because there
hadnt been much more than a dozen people at the show. When
the last angry customer had been appeased, I gave the bag of
sandwiches to Chuck.

"What was all that about? Ive been
waiting out here to give you this stuff for almost half an
hour." (This was sort of true, since five minutes is almost
half an hour, kind of).

"Schtopowitz," said Chuck. It was all
he needed to say. Schtopowitz was the projectionist, and
hed been a little slow on the reel changes lately; at least
once a night, there would be a blank screen between reels lasting
anywhere from a second and a half to 20 seconds. More than a
couple seconds of blank screen would get the audience yelling
rude things, but no one had asked for his money back before (at
least for that-- The Park was a revival house, and about once a
month we had someone demand a refund because the feature was in
black and white).

"How long was the movie off?"

"He put the WRONG REEL on," said
Chuck. "Twice."

"Wow," I said. "What did he say
went wrong?"

"He wont talk to me. He
wouldnt answer the intercom so I sent Tommy upstairs. He
says Schtopowitz has barricaded himself in the projection booth.
He told Tommy hed talk to Dick. I called Dick." Dick
was the owner of the theater, and he arrived a few minutes later.

"If hes gone crazy, I can maybe get
rid of him," said Dick. "I have to check the contract.
The union is tough. Its impossible to summarily dismiss a
member of the projectionist union. I can file a report, but if I
remember right, he has to eat a baby in Macys window in
order to get fired." He looked at Chuck, and then at me.
"Not literally," he explained. "Not quite...
Speaking of eating, how long has this sandwich been here?
Its ice cold. And is this horseradish? I hate
horseradish."

"If Id known you were going to be
eating my sandwich, I would have ordered one more to your
liking," said Chuck.

Dick nodded. He hit the intercom button.
"Schtopowitz, this is Dick. OVER."

"I dont need HELP," said
Schtopowitz. Im sick of these crappy pictures. I dont
like em."

"Beg pardon?"

"I dont like these movies we show.
They all stink. We should show something good. We should show
Four for Texas. Did you ever see it? Joey Bishop
plays an Indian. Its a riot."

"...Wait a minute. You DELIBERATELY
screwed up the reels??"

"Ive had enough--"

"...Because we dont show enough JOEY
BISHOP movies??"

"Joey Bishop and OTHER HIGH QUALITY MOTION
PICTURES."

Dick nodded. "Murray," he said,
"The only reason Im not going to tell the union you
deliberately fouled up the picture tonight to protest no Joey
Bishop movies is because were old friends..."

"...TELL EM. Theyd never
believe you!"

"Murray, I TAPED EVERY WORD WE SAID."

"I dont believe you."

"Nonetheless, its true," Dick
lied. "So you promise me no more funny stuff with the reels,
and well forget the whole thing. But Ill think about
this Texas movie."

"The sequel, Texas Across the
River, is also excellent."

Dick clicked off the Intercom. "No Joey
Bishop movies here, ever," he said to Chuck. He was about to
deposit the cold roast beef sandwich in the wastebasket but
before he could, Chuck said, "Mind if I finish that?"

"Help yourself," said Dick.
"Its all yours."

"Exactly," said Chuck.

There were no more strange reel changes (at
least deliberate ones); I was never sent out for roast beef
sandwiches again. Joey Bishop never appeared at the Park Theater,
ever.

ASK
THE ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

Something I have always wondered: are anchovies
(when used as a pizza topping, for instance) full-grown? Or are
the anchovies we are familiar with baby anchovies? In which case
just how big is an adult anchovy?

(SIGNED)

Its a constant source of wonder to me

DEAR ITS

I dont have the faintest idea. What the
hell is the difference, anyway?

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

What is the difference between sardines and
anchovies?

(SIGNED)

Not sure about the difference between sardines
and anchovies, if indeed there is one.

DEAR NOT:

Sardines come in little cans. Anchovies
dont. Or maybe they do, I dont know. You might want
to check with the Sardine Expert Guy. He has all these FACTS
right at his fingertips, which is why he was recently given a
substantial raise. It had nothing to do with him being the cousin
of the Expert Guy Chief Executive. People who spread these
nepotism rumors are just plain SICK. I have a memo from the
Expert Guy Chief Executive that says so. By my count it contains
6 misspellings and at least 3 egregious grammatical errors in the
space of two paragraphs.

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

We all know that anchovies are indigenous to
the Mediterranean. What I wonder is, can they be hatched
elsewhere and thrive? It seems to me that the time has come for
us to reduce our dependence on foreign anchovies.

(SIGNED)

Patriot

DEAR PATRIOT:

Hatch, yes, thrive, no. Well, in point of fact,
they will live long and happy lives in some domestic waters, but
they will also lack the tangy taste that makes them sought after
in the first place. There must be (cough)... SOMETHING IN THE
WATER (in the Mediterranean Sea, that is) that imparts the
distinctive flavor. Whether its literally some substance in
the water itself, or some as yet undetermined sea-creature the
anchovies feed upon, we simply dont know as yet. But the
SARDINE EXPERT GUY probably knows. Hes really smart. He
knows everything.

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

Im amazed when I shop at the gourmet
specialty store and find "flavored" anchovy paste. Why
am I amazed? Because anchovy IS a taste, and a great (albeit
acquired) one. Yet I go to the shop and I am confronted with
smoked anchovy and anchovy / onion and heaven only
knows what else. Can the day be far when the people who ruined
bagels for us come out with BLUEBERRY anchovy paste?

(SIGNED)

Purist

DEAR PURIST:

You ask two questions here, and I will answer
them in reverse order. In re: can the day be far blah blah blah
blueberry anchovy paste?, yes, the day can be far. In re: why are
you amazed?, I dont know. Maybe because you have a
well-developed sense of wonder and are amazed at all sorts of
things. Or maybe because you are a total freaking ding-dong. You
would know better than I, which it is. And I know which way
Im betting. Thanks for writing.

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

Do anchovies taste as gross as they look?

(SIGNED)

Vinnie

DEAR VINNIE:

Yes. If anything, they taste even grosser. Hey,
my spellcheck thinks I want to say, "they taste even
grocer." My spellcheck would love the Expert Guy Chief
Executive. If my spellcheck and the E.G.C.E. hit it off, maybe
the Sardine Expert Guy and his ugly girl friend could double date
with them.

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

Im very fond of the taste of anchovies
(well-- of course! Otherwise I wouldnt be reading your
column!), especially on a pizza. But my husband cant stand
them. I thought the ideal solution was to order half anchovy,
half something else (pepperoni is about his speed * groan *). But
he says the anchovy taste (or maybe smell-- he isnt
consistent about it) infects the whole pizza. Is this
even possible? I think he just doesnt even want to look at
anchovies while hes eating, the big wuss.

(SIGNED)

Thinks hes a big wuss

DEAR THINKS:

Well, infects is probably the wrong
word, but anchovies do have a pretty strong flavor and it could
well extend beyond the invisible line dividing your halves of the
pizza. On the other hand, it could also be that youre right
and he doesnt want to look at your anchovies. So what? In
the end, it comes to the same thing-- your anchovies are spoiling
his appetite, and whats the difference whether its
the taste, the smell, or the sight? Id suggest getting two
pies and refrigerating the uneaten portions of each, but
anchovies do not preserve well even in the fridge for more than a
day or two. Maybe you could compromise and do Chinese takeout
next time.

* * *

DEAR ANCHOVY EXPERT GUY:

Just to clear something up-- one of your
readers recently asked the difference between sardines and
anchovies, and you were uncertain about it. In fact, many
sardines are herrings, which are closely related to the anchovy.
Anchovies are sold in tins just like sardines, and often packed
in oil or tomato sauce or mustard, just like sardines. And some
companies market anchovies as sardines, though if you read the
labels carefully youll find the word anchovy
somewhere. Well, thats all I wanted to say. Keep up the
good work.

(SIGNED)

Big Fan

DEAR BIG:

Thanks for writing. Bite me.

The Third
Collyer Brother

In my youth I was not the worlds most
organized individual. My room was often in a state of mild
disarray. From time to time my father would poke his head in to
speak to me and would suddenly stop in mid sentence. "The
condition of this room brings my mind to a complete
standstill," he said. "Ive never seen a mess like
this in my life. Youre like the third Collyer
Brother."

I had no idea who the Collyer Brothers were.
For some reason I thought they had something to do with cough
drops, or possibly Arrow Shirts. Or maybe they were a 3rd
rate comedy team, like the Ritz Brothers. I didnt know how
many of Collyer Brothers there were, and couldnt imagine
why he thought I was like the third one. More to the point, I
never bothered to ask, and put them out of my mind for 35 years
or so, until my friend Andy Robinson (not the one who played
Liberace, though he still gets some unusual phone calls about it
from time to time) and I were talking about an acquaintance who
never throws anything away. "You cant move in his
apartment," said Andy. "I wont go there anymore.
Hes got old newspapers stacked up along the walls.
Its like the Collyer Brothers."

"Huh?" I said. I was instantly
plunged back three and a half decades to my room on Third Avenue
in Little Falls. I could smell the Fritos I had dropped behind
the radiator a few months earlier, or perhaps it was the socks I
had crammed among the science fiction paperbacks the previous
summer. "Who ARE the Collyer Brothers?" I asked.

"The Collyer Brothers [said Andy] were
these two rich guys who lived in a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New
York, and they were really rich and had all the electricity and
water and heat turned off and they never ever threw anything
away. The younger brother, Homer, went blind at some point and
the older brother, Langley, fed him oranges, and peanut butter on
black bread to restore his sight. Langley would only leave the
house to scavenge stuff to bring into the house. He saved every
newspaper, so when Homer got his sight back he could catch up on
the news. He started saving the papers in 1914 and kept it up for
over 30 years. The house had some much junk in it that he sort of
quarried it into tunnels, and bobby-trapped it in case robbers
broke in. One day in 1947 while Langley was crawling through one
of the tunnels of crap to bring his brother dinner, he set off
one of his own bobby traps and died under tons of debris. Homer
starved to death. When workmen cleaned out the house, they found
among other things 3 dressmakers dummies, 14 grand pianos, the
chassis of a model T Ford, the jawbone of a horse, 8 mummified
cats, 2 seven-foot sections of a tree, a broken scooter..."

"Wow. Thats really NUTS," I
said.

"Yeah. Imagine saving NEWSPAPERS. I mean,
I collect things..."

"Well, sure, I do too..."

"But thats nuts..."

"Oh yeah."

"...I save TV Guides."

"..."

"Ive been collecting them since
1966."

"..."

"The first issue was the one before the
one with Batman on the cover. I guess I decided to save the
Batman cover and last weeks issue was still around, so I
decided to save that one, too."

"...Uh..."

"Back when I started, TV Guide was totally
different. It was saddle bound, and stapled in the middle. Now of
course, it has a flat spine and its glued. It used to be a
signature, and youd have the glossy color pages at the
beginning and the end. Now all the color is in the front. And way
back in the day, they would put a little icon next to a show if
it were in color. At some point they started noting it if it was
in black & white."

"...Uh..."

"I mean, the Collyers were nuts, but you
can sorta see why they couldnt stop collecting the
newspapers. Once youve got all the papers from 1914, why
stop? What possible reason can there be to say, yeah,
Ive got all the papers from 1914-1928, but Im not
going to save any of these papers from 1929."

"...Uh..."

"Actually, it doesnt come to that
many TV Guides. Ive got them in the dining room. Well, it
would be the dining room if I ate there. They dont really
take up that much space. Everything fits in 13 boxes. Ten TV
Guides equals on bundle. I put a rubber band around the bundle,
and put it in the box. It works out to about 3 years per
box."

"Do you ever look at these?"

"Hell no! Well, I recently put new rubber
bands on the bundles, because the old ones tend to kind of decay
after about 20 years..."

"Did you look at them then?"

"Nope."

Long silence.

"Did I mention," he continued,
"That the stacks are numbered? Box 13 ends with stack 151. I
just bundled the George Harrison issue up, that was stack
153."

"So... youve got 2 stacks
unboxed."

"That is correct."

Long pause. This was like one of those pauses
you have when youre talking to someone who just had a
growth removed from his gums and youre moving youre
tongue around thinking poor guy, thats too-- hey--
whats this?? Is this a bump??

"So," I said at last, "Do you
collect the TV Guide collectors editions? You know, the
variant covers? I think there were four different Harrison
covers, for instance..."

"Oh, no. Geez." Relieved laughter.
"No, that would be nuts."

I decided that GOOD THINGS to collect were
things that were finished, like original Monets. There's a set
number of them, there aren't going to be any more, you know when
youre done. No chance of collecting Monets and waking up
one morning with so many youve got to tunnel your way
through them to reach the orange juice. BAD THINGS to collect are
things that they send you every week, like, oh, TV Guides. A
definite fighting chance of waking up someday in 2010 and seeing
The Third Collyer Brother in the bathroom mirror. Assuming you
can find the bathroom mirror. Or the bathroom...

EASY MONEY

I was trying to come up with a list of New
Years Resolutions and I wasnt having much luck; I was
14 and it was inconceivable to me that I was not already The
Summit of Perfection. What could I possibly do or not do that
would make me BETTER? Obviously nothing. But my sister-- six
years my senior and unaware of my flawlessness-- insisted that we
make our resolutions and then exchange lists. I peeked over her
shoulder. Shed written "Be More Patient With Those
Less Mature Than I."

Yeah right. I was PLENTY patient with the
immature, thank you very much. If anything I was too patient. I
had recently come across the phrase "...does not suffer
fools gladly..." (I think in a profile of George C Scott in
Parade Magazine) and I thought, thats for me. People
watching me saunter down the street would nudge each other and
say, "Nice guy, but he does not suffer fools gladly."
But I couldnt think how to frame that as a New Years
Resolution. "Get People To Murmur Does Not Suffer
Fools Gladly" seemed a bit cumbersome, not to say
absurd. Wracking my brain for a way to improve that which could
not be improved, I finally lit upon: "Hang up towel after
taking bath more often." Just this evening, my father had
stomped into my bedroom and thrown a soggy towel at me, saying
"Would ya for crying out loud hang up your towels after you
take a bath??" Not that I regarded leaving the towel on the
bathroom floor as a problem-- after all, somehow or other it
always got picked up by SOMEBODY, so I had no idea why he was
complaining-- but it was evidence that I could correct things--
or rather "correct" things-- which other people
believed to be faults. While I did not suffer fools gladly, I was
willing to cut the old folks a little slack around the holidays.
Why not? And of course, my careful wording ("...more
often...") meant that if I hung up the towel EVEN ONCE, I
had kept my New Years Resolution. As the kids today say (or
anyway said a couple years ago), sweet.

It occurred to me that I could resolve not to
do things I wouldnt do anyway, and bulk out the list that
way. I wrote, "Do not soap up Mr. Gigers windows this
Halloween." Then I crossed it off. I had never soaped up Mr.
Gigers windows and had no interest in doing so, but why, I
said to myself, limit my options? "Dont swear in
church." Much better. And easily achieved by sleeping in on
Sunday morning...

A heavy hand fell upon my shoulder.
"Makin up the old New Years Resolutions,
eh?" said my Uncle Tug. Uncle Tug had wondered over to the
house, whence he would accompany my parents to the neighborhood
New Years Eve bash at the Masonic Temple. Tugs car
had been repoed recently ("A tragic bureaucratic
error...") and he was wondering over to the house a lot.

"Yuh," I said.

"Lets see... Hey, Pammy, these are
good. Although I think you need to work on your grammar--
Thats gotta be "those who is less mature than
ME," Im sure." Pam made a non-committal noise
deep in her throat. Uncle Tug turned his attention to my list.
"These are even better. I mean, this one means you basically
avoid going to church, this one means you stay away from your
Aunt, who is well worth staying away from, this one means you
dont take messages for your sister..." To my horror, I
felt my ears reddening. Uncle Tug had somehow divined the secret
subtext of my resolutions! "But you know... you kids could
stand to make a little money. Your great Uncle Wally is on his
way over, to give everybody a lift to the party and not
incidentally show off his new Cadillac--" (Tug had a real
knack for divining secret subtexts) "--and if you play your
cards right, you can probably parlay your resolutions into some
bucks. When your Mom and I were kids, Wally gave her 10 bucks one
New Years when she resolved not to chew our fingernails any more.
I remember he HATED people chewing their nails. So what we did,
well, your mom bit her nails, but I didnt, see? And he was
always telling her to knock it off. So I overheard him telling my
folks he was going to give your mom ten bucks if she resolved to
stop gnawing the fingernails. If the next time he stopped by
there was no sign of chewing, hed just give her the bill
RIGHT ON THE SPOT. And thats what happened. And when I saw
him unfolding that Hamilton, I thought, Tuggy, you missed a bet
here! You shoulda chomped on your nails New Years Eve, and then
resolved not to do it anymore, and Old Wally-- he wasnt
quite so old then, but he was up there, let me tell you-- woulda
given YOU ten bucks, too. Well, its not too late for you
two to learn from my mistake. If I were you, Id stick
"Stop chewing fingernails" at the top of the list and
then start chewing away for dear life. And make sure Wally gets a
look at those mutilated nails when he gets here. Then watch what
happens. Itll be the easiest money youll ever make.

There was no telling when Wally would arrive--
it could be any second. Pam and I raced to our rooms and started
chewing away. I was working on a stubborn pinky nail when the
doorbell rang. Pam and I raced downstairs. I shoved her out of
the way to open the door. "Unca Wally!" I cried.
"Great to see you!" I grabbed his hand and pumped it.
"Hey, nice watch," I said, so we both looked down at
the watch, and at my fingernails.

"Rolex," he said.

"Nice," I said. I held on a moment
later, waiting for him to berate me for my nails. Nothing. My
sister threw her arms around Wallys neck and gave him a
peck on the cheek. Id already used the watch gambit so she
was reduced to holding her hands up to her face, palms in, to
display her ragged nails. "Im so glad youre
here," she said. It looked pretty bizarre, but it afforded a
great view of her nails.

"Thanks," said Uncle Wally, clearly
puzzled.

I looked pleadingly at Uncle Tug, who seemed as
baffled as we did.

"Hey, Unca Wally," he said.
"Remember when Annie and I were kids and you gave her ten
bucks for not biting her nails one year? Those were the days,
huh?"

"It was for not SMOKING," said Wally,
who then scooped up some dip on a potato chip and sampled it.